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ASPECTS OF POETRY. 

JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP. 



ASPECTS OF POETRY 



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JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP, LL. D. 

PROFESSOR OF POETRY, OXFORD; PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE, 
ST. ANDREWS 




BOSTON 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK : 1 1 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET 

CJe HtoermUe Press, CamfirtUge 
189 1 



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The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Stereotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 






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PREFACE. 



The fo lowing pages contain twelves Lectures se- 
lected from those which I have delivered from the Chair 
of Poetry in Oxford during the last four years, some 
of which have already been published separately. To 
these have been added three Chapters (XI., XIL, 
XIII.) , which were not delivered as Lectures in Ox- 
ford, but which are, by the kind permission of the Pro- 
prietor, reprinted from Good Words. 

Some might, perhaps, expect to find in this book a 
systematic theory of poetry, and a consecutive course 
of Lectures. But the conditions of the Professorship, 
which require one Lecture to be delivered during each 
Academic term, render it difficult, even if it were on 
other grounds . desirable, to preserve such continuity. 
The audiences which listen to these Lectures change 
from term to term ; so that a course begun before one 
set of hearers would have to be continued before an- 
other, and completed before a third. This renders it 
almost a necessity that each Lecture should be, as far as 
possible, complete in itself. 

As to the mode of treatment pursued, I have tried to 
adapt it, as well as I could, to the varied character of 
my hearers. These consisted of Undergraduates, of 



VI PREFACE, 

Graduates, and of some who were of neither of these. 
Among these last were not a few of those resident 
Gentlewomen, who now form a new and not unpleasing 
element in some Oxford Lecture-rooms. As my pre- 
decessor in the Poetry Chair said in the Preface to his 
published Lectures, I felt it to be my duty, having 
found a large number of persons willing to listen, to do 
what I could to retain them. This seemed most likely 
to be done by treating the several subjects under review 
in a broad way, and by presenting their larger outlines, 
rather than by dwelling on refined subtleties or minute 
details. On verbal criticism and scholastic erudition 
sufficient attention is bestowed in the various Lecture- 
rooms of the Colleges and of the University. It would 
seem to be a desirable variety, if, in one Lecture-room 
filled by a general audience, a different treatment were 
adopted. 

For the rest, the Lectures, both as to the views they 
advance, and the way in which these views are ex- 
pressed, must speak for themselves. No formal canons 
of criticisms have been here laid down, but the princi- 
ples which underlie and the sentiments which animate 
the Lectures are, I trust, sufficiently apparent. 

When I have been aware that I have derived a 
thought from another writer, I have tried to acknowl- 
edge it in the text. But it is a pleasure to record here, 
in a more explicit way, many obligations to the kindness 
of personal friends. 

For information on the difficult Ossianic question, 
which I have tried to condense into a few plain para- 



PREFACE. Vll 

graphs, I have to thank Mr. W. F. Skene, D. C. L., 
author of Celtic Scotland, — that work of difficult and 
original research, with which he has crowned the labor 
of his life. To Dr. Clerk of Kilmallie also, author of 
the new translation of Ossian, I am indebted for ever- 
ready help on the same subject, as well as for kind aid 
afforded, when I was translating the Gaelic of Duncan 
Maclntyre's poems. 

In the Lecture on Virgil I have to acknowledge the 
free use I have made of the scholarly and suggestive 
work on Virgil by Professor Sellar ; to whom too I owe 
my introduction to M. Gaston Boissier's work entitled 
La Religion Romaine, from which I derived valuable 
assistance. 

The Lecture on Cardinal Newman is, in my thoughts, 
specially associated with another college friend. Several 
of the passages I have cited in the course of this Lect- 
ure recall to me walks around Oxford, and evening talks 
in college rooms, during which I first heard them from 
the lips of the present Lord Coleridge. From him too 
I have quite recently received some suggestions, which 
[ have gladly embodied in the text. 

Lastly, the late Dean Stanley, with his never-failing 
friendliness, took lively interest in these Lectures, and 
frequently talked with me over the subjects of them, 
before they were composed. 

One occasion, the last on which I enjoyed his delight- 
ful society, will long live in my remembrance. I had 
paid a two days' visit to him in his hospitable home in 
the Deanery, in the early days of last March. I was 



Vlll PREFACE. 

then meditating the Lecture on Carlyle ; and on the 
second day of my visit we spoke a good deal about the 
subject, which interested him and me alike. He sug- 
gested several passages, in which Carlyle's poetic power 
seemed to him conspicuous. On the last day of my 
visit, Saturday the 5th of March, while I was engaged 
in a hurried breakfast, before starting for the Scotch 
Express, he opened a book, Mr. Justice Stephen's Lib- 
erty, Equality, and Fraternity, and, in the dim light of 
the early morning, read aloud in his clear, impressive 
tones the passage I have quoted from Carlyle, which 
thus ends : — 

..." through mystery to mystery, from God and to God." 
These words were hardly uttered, when I had to rise 
and go. It was our last parting. 

J. C. Shairp. 
Houstotjn, September, 1881. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

The Province of Poetry 1 



CHAPTER II. 
Criticism and Creation 31 

CHAPTER III. 
The Spiritual Side op Poetry .66 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Poet a Revealer 80 

CHAPTER V. 
Poetic Style in Modern English Poetry . . . 104 

CHAPTER VI. 
Virgil as a Religious Poet .136 

CHAPTER VII. 
Scottish Song, and Burns 164 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 

Shelley as a Lyric Poet 194 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Poetry of the Scottish Highlands. — Ossian . 219 

CHAPTER X. 
Modern Gaelic Bards. — Duncan MacIntyre . . . 246 

CHAPTER XI. 
The Three Yarrows 270 

CHAPTER XH. 
The White Doe of Rylstone 295 

CHAPTER XIII. 
The Homeric Spirit in Walter Scott .... 323 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Prose Poets. — Thomas Carlyle 849 

CHAPTER XV. 
Prose Poets. — Cardinal Newman 377 



ASPECTS OF POETRY. 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

Were I to begin my first Lecture from this Chair, 
in which the kindness of the University has placed me, 
by following an approved and time-honored usage, I 
might ask at the outset, What is Poetry ? and try to 
answer the question either by falling back on some one 
of the old definitions, or by proposing a new one, or 
perhaps by even venturing on a theory of Poetry. But, 
as you are all, no doubt, more or less acquainted with 
the definitions and theories of the past, and probably 
have not found much profit in them, you will, I believe, 
readily absolve me from any attempt to add one more 
to their number. For definitions do not really help us 
better to understand or appreciate subjects with which 
we have been long familiar, especially when they are, 
as poetry is, all life and spirit. As my friend the au- 
thor of Rab and his Friends has well expressed it, " It is 
with Poetry as with flowers and fruits. We would all 
rather have them and taste them than talk about them. 
It is a good thing to know about a lily, its scientific ins 
and outs, its botany, its archaeology, even its anatomy 
and organic radicals ; but it is a better thing to look at 
1 






r; 



2 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

the flowers themselves, and to consider how they grow.'* 
So one would rather enjoy poetry than criticise it and 
discuss its nature. But, as there is a time for studying 
the botany of flowers, as well as for enjoying their 
beauty, there is a time also for dwelling on the nature 
and offices of poetry, and that time seems to have come 
to-day. 

I think I shall be able best to bring before you what 
I wish to say at present, if, approaching the subject in a 
concrete rather than in an abstract way, I endeavor at 
the outset to note some of the more prominent character- 
istics of the poetic nature, when that nature appears in 
its largest and most healthful manifestation. 

In doing so I shall have to tread some well-worn 
ways, and to say things which have often been said be- 
fore. But I shall willingly incur this risk. For my 
aim is not so much to say things that are new as things 
that are true. You will therefore bear with me, I hope, 
if I try to recall to your thoughts a few plain but 
primal truths regarding that which is most essential in 
the poetic nature, — truths which are apt to be forgot- 
ten amid the fashions of the hour, and to lie buried be- 
neath heaps of superfine criticism. 

One of the first characteristics of the genuine and 
healthy poetic nature is this, — it is rooted rather in the 
heart than in the head. Human-heartedness is the soil 
from which all its other gifts originally grow and are 
continually fed. The true poet is not an eccentric crea- 
ture, not a mere artist living only for art, not a dreamer 
or a dilettante, sipping the nectar of existence, while he 
keeps aloof from its deeper interests. He is, above all 
things, a man among his fellow-men, with a heart that 
beats in sympathy with theirs, a heart not different from 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 3 

theirs, only larger, more open, more sensitive, more 
intense. It is the peculiar depth, intensity, and fine- 
ness of his emotional nature which kindles his intellect 
and inspires it with energy. He does not feel differently 
from other men, but he feels more. There is a larger 
field of things over which his feelings range, and in 
which he takes vivid interest. If, as we have been 
often told, sympathy is the secret of all insight, this 
holds especially true of poetic insight, which more than 
any other derives its power of seeing from sympathy 
with the object seen. There is a kinship between the 
poetic eye and the thing it looks on, in virtue of which 
it penetrates. As the German poet says : — 

" If the eye had not been sunny, 
How could it look upon the sun V " 

And herein lies one great distinction between the po- 
etic and the scientific treatment of things. The scien- 
tific man must keep his feelings under stern control, lest 
they intrude into his researches and color the dry light, 
in which alone Science desires to see its objects. The 
poet, on the other hand, — it is because his feelings in- 
form and kindle his intellect that he sees into the life of 
things. 

Some, perhaps, may recall the names of great poets, 
though not the greatest, who have fled habitually from 
human neighborhood, and dwelt apart in proud isolation. 
But this does not, I think, disprove the view that hu- 
man-heartedness is the great background of the poet's 
strength, for to the poets I speak of, their solitariness 
has been their misfortune, if not their fault. By some 
untowardness in their lot, or some malady of their time, 
they have been compelled to retire into themselves, and 
to become lonely thinkers. If their isolation has added 



4 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

some intensity to their thoughts, it has, at the same 
time, narrowed the range of their vision, and diminished 
the breadth and permanence of their influence. 

But this vivid human sympathy, though an essen- 
tial condition or background of all great poetry, by no 
means belongs exclusively to the poet. Taking other 
forms, it is characteristic of all men who have deeply 
moved or greatly benefited their kind, — of St. Augus- 
tine, Luther, Howard, Clarkson, and Wilberforce, not 
less than of Homer, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott. 

I must therefore pass on to points more distinctive of 
the poet, and consider — 

What is the object or material with which the poet 
deals. 

What is the special power which he brings to bear on 
that object. 

What is his true aim ; what the function which he 
fulfils in human society. 

The poet's peculiar domain has generally been said to 
be Beauty ; and there is so much truth in this that, if 
the thing must be condensed into a single word, prob- 
ably none better could be found. For it is one large 
part of the poet's vocation to be a witness for the 
Beauty which is in the world around him and in human 
life. But this one word is too narrow to cover all the 
domain over which the poetic spirit ranges. It fits well 
that which attracts the poet in the face of nature, and is 
applicable to many forms of mental and moral excel- 
lence. But there are other things which rightly win 
his regard, to which it cannot be applied without stretch- 
ing it till it becomes meaningless. Therefore I should 
rather say that the whole range of existence, or any 
part of it, when imaginatively apprehended, seized on 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 5 

the side of its human interest, may be transfigured into 
poetry. There is nothing that exists, except things ig- 
noble and mean, in which the true poet may not find 
himself at home, — in the open sights of nature, in the 
occult secrets of science, in the " quicquid agunt homi- 
nes," in, men's character and fortunes, in their actions 
and sufferings, their joys and sorrows, their past history, 
their present experience, their future destiny. All these 
lie open to him who has power to enter in, and, by 
might of imaginative insight, to possess them. And 
such is the kinship between man and all that exists 
that, as I have elsewhere said, "whenever the soul 
comes vividly in contact with any fact, truth, or exist- 
ence, whenever it realizes and takes them home to itself 
with more than common intensity, out of that meeting 
of the soul and its object there arises a thrill of joy, a 
glow of emotion ; and the expression of that glow, that 
thrill, is poetry." But as each age modifies in some 
measure men's conceptions of existence, and brings to 
light new aspects of life before undreamt of, so Poetry, 
which is the expression of these aspects, is ever chang- 
ing, in sympathy with the changing consciousness of the 
race. A growth old as thought, but ever young, it 
alters its form, but renews its vitality, with each suc- 
ceeding age. 

As to the specific organ or mental gift through which 
poets work, every one knows that it is Imagination. 
But if asked what Imagination is, who can tell ? If we 
turn to the psychologists, — the men who busy them- 
selves with labelling and ticketing the mental faculties, 
— they do not much help us. Scattered through the 
poets here and there, and in some writers on aesthetic 
subjects, notably in the works of Mr. Ruskin, we find 



6 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

thoughts which are more suggestive. Perhaps it is a 
thing to rejoice in that this marvellous faculty has 
hitherto baffled the analysts. For it would seem that 
when you have analyzed any vital entity down to its 
last elements, you have done your best to destroy it. 

I may, however, observe in passing that the following 
seem to be some of the most prominent notes of the 
way in which Imagination works : — 

To a man's ordinary conceptions of things Imagina- 
tion adds force, clearness, distinctness of outline, vivid- 
ness of coloring. 

Again, it seems to be a power intermediate between 
intellect and emotion, looking towards both, and par- 
taking of the nature of both. In its highest form, it 
would seem to be based on " moral intensity." The 
emotional and the intellectual in it act and react on 
each other, deep emotion kindling imagination, and ex- 
pressing itself in imaginative form, while imaginative 
insight kindles and deepens emotion. 

Closely connected with this is what some have called 
the penetrative, others the interpretative, power of Im- 
agination. It is that subtle and mysterious gift, that 
intense intuition, which, piercing beneath all surface ap- 
pearance, goes straight to the core of an object, enters 
where reasoning and peddling analysis are at fault, lays 
hold of the inner heart, the essential life, of a scene, a 
character, or a situation, and expresses it in a few im- 
mortal words. What is the secret of this penetrative 
glance, who shall say ? It defies analysis. Neither the 
poet himself who puts it forth, nor the critic who exam- 
ines the result, can explain how it works, can lay his 
finger on the vital source of it. A line, a word, has 
flashed the scene upon us, has made the character live 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 7 

before us ; how, we know not, only the thing is done. 
And others, when they see it, exclaim, How true to 
nature this is ! So like what I have often felt myself > 
only I could never express it ! But the poet has ex- 
pressed it, and this is what makes him an interpreter to 
men of their own unuttered experience. All great poets 
are full of this power. It is that by which Shakespeare 
read the inmost heart of man, Wordsworth of nature. 

A further note of Imagination is that combining and 
harmonizing power, in virtue of which the poetic mind, 
guided by the eternal forms of beauty which inhabit 
it, out of a mass of incongruous materials drops those 
which are accidental and irrelevant, and selects those 
which suit its purpose, — those which bring out a given 
scene or character, — and combines them into a harmo- 
nious whole. 

The last note I shall mention is what may be called 
the shaping or embodying power of Imagination, — I 
mean the power of clothing intellectual and spiritual 
conceptions in appropriate forms. This is that which 
Shakespeare speaks of : — 

"Imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown." 

And conversely there is in Imagination a power which 
spiritualizes what is visible and corporeal, and fills it 
with a higher meaning than mere understanding dreams 
of. These two processes are seen at work in all great 
poets, the one or the other being stronger, according to 
the bent of each poet's nature. 

While Imagination, working in these and other ways, 
is the poet's peculiar endowment, it is clear that for its 
beneficent operation there must be present an ample 
range, a large store of material on which to work. 



8 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

This it carmot create for itself. From other regions it 
must be gathered ; from a wealth of mind in the poet 
himself, from large experience of life and intimate 
knowledge of nature, from the exercise of his heart, his 
judgment, his reflection, indeed of his whole being, on 
all he has seen and felt. In fact, a great poet must be 
a man made wise by large experience, much feeling, and 
deep reflection : above all, he must have a hold of the 
great central truth of things. When these many con- 
ditions are present, then and then only can his imagina- 
tion work widely, benignly, and for all time ; then only 
can the poet become a 

" Serene creator of immortal things." 

Imagination is not, as has sometimes been conceived, 
a faculty of falsehood or deception, calling up merely 
fictitious and fantastic views. It is preeminently a 
truthful and truth-seeing faculty, perceiving subtle as- 
pects of truth, hidden relations, far-reaching analogies, 
which find no entrance to us by any other inlet. It is 
the power which vitalizes all knowledge: which makes 
the dead abstract and the dead concrete meet, and by 
their meeting live ; which suffers not truth to dwell by 
itself in one compartment of the mind, but carries it 
home through our whole being, — understanding, affec- 
tions, will. 

This vivid insight, this quick, imaginative intuition, 
is accompanied by a delight in the object or truth be- 
held, — a glow of heart, "a white heat of emotion," 
which is the proper condition of creation. The joy of 
imagination in its own vision, the thrill of delight, is 
Dne of the most exquisite moods man ever experiences. 

Emotion, then, from first to last inseparably attends 
the exercise of Imagination, preeminently in him who 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 9 

creates, in a lesser degree in those who enjoy his crea- 
tions. 

In this aspect of poetry, as in some sense the imme- 
diate product of emotion, some have seen its necessary 
weakness and its limitation. Emotion, they say, be- 
longs to youth, and must needs disappear before mature 
reason and ripe reflection. Time must dull feelings, 
however vivid, cool down passions, however fervid. 
How many poets have reiterated Byron's lament, that 

" The early glow of thought declines in feeling's dull decay " ! 

How much of the poetry of all ages is filled with pas- 
sionate regrets for objects 

" Too early lost, too hopelessly deplored " ! 

No wonder, therefore, that strong men, who despise sen- 
timentality, and will not spend their lives in bemoan- 
ing the inevitable, are wont, as they grow older, to 
drop poetry of this kind, along with other youthful 
illusions. The truth of this cannot be gainsaid. The 
poetry of regret may please youth, which has buoy- 
ancy enough in itself to bear the weight of sadness not 
its own. But those who have learnt by experience 
what real sorrow is have no strength to waste on im- 
aginary sorrows. And if all poetry were of this char- 
acter, it would be true enough that it contained no re- 
freshment for toiling, suffering men. 

But, not to speak of purely objective poets, there is 
in great meditntive poets a higher wisdom, a serener 
region, than that of imaginative regret. There are 
poets who, after having experienced and depicted the 
tumults of the soul, after having felt and sung the pain 
?f unsatisfied desires, or uttered their yearning regret 
" T hat things depart which never may return," 



10 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

have been able to retire Within themselves, thence to 
contemplate the fever of excitement from a higher, more 
permanent region, and to illuminate, as has been said, 
transitory emotion "with the light of a calm, infinite 
world." Such poets do not ignore the heartless things 
that are done in the world, but they forgive them ; the 
dark problems of existence they do not try to explain, 
but they make you feel that there is light behind, if we 
could but see it ; the discords and dissonances of life 
are still there, but over them all they seem to shed a 
reconciling spirit. This serene wisdom, this large and 
luminous contemplation, absorbs into itself all conflict, 
passion, and regret, as the all-embracing blue of heaven 
holds the storms and clouds that momentarily sweep 
over it. It is seen in the " august repose" of Sophocles, 
when he prepares the calm close for the troubled day of 
the blind and exiled Theban king. It is seen in the 
spirit that pervades the Tempest, one of Shakespeare's 
latest dramas, in which, to use his own words, he 
" takes part with his nobler reason against his fury," 
and rises out of conflict and passion into a region of self- 
control and serenity. It is seen in Milton, when, amid 
the deep solitariness of his own blindness and forced inac- 
tivity, he is enabled to console himself with the thought, 

" They also serve who only stand and wait." 
It is seen in Wordsworth, he who, while feeling, as few 
have done, regret for a brightness gone which nothing 
could restore, was able to let all these experiences melt 
into his being, and enrich it, till his soul became human- 
ized by distress, and by the thoughts that spring out 
of human suffering. Poetry such as this stands the 
wear of life, and breathes a benediction even over its 
decline. 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 11 

As to the aim which the poet sets before him, the end 
which poetry is meant to fulfil, what shall be said? 
Here the critics, ancient and modern, answer, almost 
with one voice, that the end is to give pleasure. Aris- 
totle tells us that " it is the business of the tragic poet 
to give that pleasure which arises from pity and terror, 
through imitation." Horace gives an alternative end 
in his 

" Aut prodesse volunt, aut delectare Poetae," 

and he awards the palm to those poems which combine 
both ends, and at once elevate and please. To take one 
sample from the moderns : Coleridge, in his definition 
of poetry, tells us that " a poem is a species of composi- 
tion, opposed to science as having intellectual pleasure 
for its object or end," and that its perfection is " to 
communicate the greatest immediate pleasure from the 
parts compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on 
the whole." 

May I venture to differ from these great authorities, 
and to say that they seem to have mistaken that which 
is an inseparable accompaniment for that which is the 
main aim, the proper end of poetry ? The impulse to 
poetic composition is, I believe, in the first instance, 
spontaneous, almost unconscious ; and where the inspi- 
ration, as we call it, is most strong and deep, there a 
conscious purpose is least present. When a poet is . 
in the true creative mood, he is for the time possessed 
with love of the object, the truth, the vision which he 
sees, for its own sake, — is wholly absorbed in it ; the 
desire fitly to express what he sees and feels is his one 
sufficient motive, and to attain to this expression is itself 
his end and his reward. While the inspiration is at its 
strongest, the thought of giving pleasure to others or of 



12 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

winning praise for himself is weakest. The intrinsic 
delight in his own vision, and in the act of expressing it, 
keeps all extrinsic aims, for a time at least, aloof. This 
might perhaps be a sufficient account of the poet's aim 
in short lyrics and brief arrow-flights of song. But even 
in the richest poetic natures the inspiring heat cannot 
always or long be maintained at its height, 

"And tasks in hours of insight willed 
In hours of gloom must be fulfilled." 

Effort long sustained implies the presence of conscious 
purpose. Great poets cannot be conceived to have 
girded themselves to their longest, most deliberate ef- 
forts — Shakespeare to Hamlet^ Milton to Paradise Lost 
— without reflecting what was to be the effect of their 
work on their fellow-men. It would hardly have satisfied 
them at such a time to have been told that their poems 
would add to men's intellectual pleasures. They would 
not have been content with any result short of this, — the 
assurance that their work would live to awaken those 
high sympathies in men, in the exercise of which they 
themselves found their best satisfaction, and which, they 
well knew, ennoble every one who partakes of them. 
To appeal to the higher side of human nature, and to 
strengthen it, to come to its rescue, when it is overborne 
by worldliness and material interests, to support it by 
great truths, set forth in their most attractive form, — 
this is the only worthy aim, the adequate end, of all poetic 
endeavor. And this it does by expressing in beautiful 
form and melodious language the best thoughts and the 
noblest feelings which the spectacle of life awakens in 
the finest souls. This is the true office of poetry, which 
is the bloom of high thought, the efflorescence of noble 
amotion. No doubt these sympathies, once awakened, 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 13 

yield a delight among the purest and noblest man can 
know; but to minister this pleasure is not the main end 
which the poet sets before himself, but is at most a sub- 
ordinate object. The true end is to awaken men to the 
divine side of things, to bear witness to the beauty that 
clothes the outer world, the nobility that lies hid, often 
obscured, in human souls, to call forth sympathy for 
neglected truths, for noble but oppressed persons, for 
downtrodden causes, and to make men feel that, through 
all outward beauty and all pure' inward affection, God 
Himself is addressing them. 

In this endeavor poetry makes common cause with 
all high things, — with right reason and true philos- 
ophy, with man's moral intuitions and his religious as- 
pirations. It combines its influence with all those be- 
nign tendencies which are working in the world for the 
melioration of man and the manifestation of the king- 
dom of God. It is adding from age to age its own cur- 
rent to those great 

"tides that are flowing- 
Right onward to the eternal shore." 

But, if it has great allies, it has also powerful adver- 
saries. The worship of wealth and of all it gives, a 
materialistic philosophy which disbelieves in all knowl- 
edge unverifiable by the senses, luxury, empty display, 
worldliness, and cynicism, with these true poetry can- 
not dwell. In periods and in circles where these are 
paramount, the poet is discredited, his function as a wit- 
ness to high truth is denied. If tolerated at all, he is 
degraded into a merely ornamental personage, a sayer 
of pretty things, a hanger-on of society and the great. 
Such is the only function which degenerate ages allow 
to him, and this is a function which only poets of baser 



14 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

metal will accept. The truly great poets in every age 
have felt the nobility of their calling, have perceived 
that their true function is not to amuse, or merely to 
give delight, but to be witnesses for the ideal and spirit- 
ual side of things, to come to the help of the generous, 
the noble, and the true, against the mighty. 

And, though some exceptions there have been, yet i. 
is true that the great majority of poets in all times 
have, according to their gifts, recognized this to be their 
proper aim, and fulfilled it. Therefore we say once 
more, in the words of one of the foremost of the brother- 
hood — 

" Blessings be on them and eternal praise! 
Who gave us nobler love3 and nobler cares, 
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs 
Of truth, and pure delight by heavenly lays." 

If these general views are true, there follow from 
them some practical corollaries as to our poetic judg- 
ments, which, while true for all times, are yet specially 
applicable to this time, perhaps to this place. 

The first of these is the need we have to cultivate an 
open and catholic judgment, ready to appreciate excel- 
lence in poetry and in literature under whatever forms 
it comes. It might seem that there was little need to 
urge this here, for is not one main end of all academic 
teaching to form in the mind right standards of judg- 
ment ? Of course it is. But the process as carried on 
here is not free from hindrances. We too readily, by 
the very nature of our studies, become slaves to the 
past. Those who have spent their days in studying 
the master minds of former ages naturally take from 
their works canons of criticism by which they try all 
new productions. Hence it is that, when there appears 
§ome fresh and original creation, which is unlike any- 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 15 

thing the past has recognized, it is apt to fare ill before 
a learned tribunal. The learned and the literary are so 
trained to judge by precedents, that they often deal 
harder measure and narrower judgment to young aspi- 
rants than those do who, having no rules of criticism, 
judge merely by their own natural instincts. Literary 
circles think to bind by their formal codes young and 
vigorous genius, whose very nature it is to defy the 
conventional, and to achieve the unexpected. Many a 
time has this been seen in the history of poetry, notably 
at the opening of the present century. Those who then 
seated themselves on the high places of criticism, and 
affected to dispense judgment, brought their critical ap- 
paratus, derived from the age of Pope, to bear on the 
vigorous race of young poets who in this country ap- 
peared after the French Revolution. Jeffrey and his 
band of critics tried the new poetic brotherhood, one 
by one, found them wanting, and consigned them to ob- 
livion. Hardly more generous were the critics of the 
Quarterly Revieic. There was not one of the great 
original spirits of that time whom the then schools of 
critics did not attempt to crush. The poets sang on, 
each in his own way, heedless of the anathemas. The 
world has long since recognized them, and crowned 
them with honor. The critics, and the canons by which 
they condemned them, — where is their authority now? 
Even more to be deprecated than critics, judging by 
the past, are coteries which test all things by some domi- 
nant sentiment or short-lived fashion of the hour. Those 
who have lived some time have seen school after school 
of this sort arise, air its little nostrums for a season, 
and disappear. But such coteries, w T hile they last, do 
their best, by narrowness and intolerance, to vitiate 



16 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

literature, and are unfair alike to past eminence and 
to rising genius. I can myself remember a time when 
the subjective school of poetry was so dominant in Ox- 
ford, that some of its ablest disciples voted Walter 
Scott to be no poet ; perhaps there may be some who 
think so still. 

To guard us against all such narrowness, it is well to 
remember that the world of poetry is wide, as wide as 
existence, that no experience of the past can lay down 
rules for future originality, or limit the materials which 
fresh minds may vivify, or predict the moulds in which 
they may cast their creations. Let those who would 
preserve catholicity of judgment purge their minds of 
all formulas and fashions, and look with open eye and 
ingenuous heart, alike on the boundless range of past 
excellence, and on the hardly less boundless field of 
future possibility. If we must have canons of judgment, 
it is well to have them few, simple, and elastic, founded 
only on what is permanent in nature and in man. 

Again, in a place like this, men's thoughts are turned, 
and rightly, to the great world-poets of all time, — to 
Homer, JEschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, perhaps to Dante, 
Shakespeare, Milton. For the whole host of lesser, 
though still genuine poets, much more for the sources 
whence all poetry comes, we are apt to have but scanty 
regard. It is well perhaps that for a short time, as stu- 
dents, we should so concentrate our gaze ; for we thus 
get a standard of what is noblest in thought and most 
perfect in expression. But this exclusiveness should 
continue but a little while, and for a special purpose. 
If it be prolonged into life, if we continue only to ad- 
mire and enjoy a few poets of the greatest name, we 
become, while fancying ourselves to be large-minded, 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 17 

narrow and artificial. If our eyes were always fixed 
on the highest mountain-peaks, what should we know of 
the broad earth around us ? What should we think of 
the geographer who should acquaint himself with the 
rivers only where they broaden seaward, and bear na- 
vies on their bosom, and know nothing of the small af- 
fluents and brooks that run among the hills and feed 
the rivers, and of the mountain-wells that feed the 
brooks, and of the clouds and vapors that supply the 
wells ? You admire Homer, iEschylus, Shakespeare, 
perhaps Scott and Wordsworth and Shelley, but where 
did these get their inspiration and the materials which 
they wrought into beauty ? Xot mainly by study of 
books, not by placing before themselves literary models, 
but by going straight to the true sources of all poetry, 
by knowing and loving nature, by acquaintance with 
their own hearts, and by knowledge of their fellow- 
men. 

From the poetry of the people has been drawn most 
of what is truest, most human-hearted, in the greatest 
poems. "Would the Iliad have been possible if there had 
not existed before it a nameless crowd of rhapsodists, 
who wrought out a poetic language, and shaped the 
deeds of the heroes into rough popular songs ? Would 
Shakespeare's work have been possible, if he had not 
wrought on ground overstrewn with the wreck of me- 
diaeval mysteries, of moralities, tales, ballads, and of 
England's chronicles and traditions, as well as enriched 
by the regular plays of his predecessors ? When 
Shakespeare's " study of imagination " was filled with 
kings and heroes and statesmen such as he had never 
met with, how was it that he so painted them to the 
life ? Did not his insight into their characters, his read- 



18 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

ing of their feelings, spring from the power in him of 
imagination and memory, working on scenes he had 
witnessed, and on impressions he had gathered, first in 
the hamlets and the oak woods about his own Stratford, 
and afterwards in the city and in city life ? It was his 
own experience, not of books, but of men, idealized and 
projected into the strange and distant, till that became 
alive and near. 

No doubt, a day comes with advancing civilization, 
when the poets of the past must exercise more power 
over younger poets than they did in earlier times. But 
this at least remains true, that, if the poetry of any, 
even the most advanced, age is to retain that eternal 
freshness which is its finest grace, it must draw both its 
materials and its impulses more from sympathy with 
the people than from past poets, more from the heart 
of man than from books. If poetry is to portray true 
emotion, this must come from poets who themselves 
have felt it, and seen others feel. 

Those who are familiar with the poor know how 
much of that feeling language, which is the essence of 
poetry, may be heard at % times under cottage roofs. At 
the fall of autumn I have visited and said farewell to 
two old Highland women, sisters, sitting in their smoky 
hut beside their scanty peat-fire. With return of sum- 
mer I have revisited that hut, and found one sitting 
there alone, and have heard that sole survivor, as she 
sat on her stool, rocking her body to and fro, pour forth 
in Gaelic speech the story, how her sister pined away, 
and left her in the dead days of winter, all alone. And 
no threnody or lament poet ever penned could match 
the pathos of that simple narrative. 

In cases like this, not the feeling only is poetic, the 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 19 

words which utter it are so too. And the poet, instead 
of adopting the approved diction of poets, or coining 
tropes and images of his own, cannot do better than 
adopt the language of genuine emotion, as it comes 
warm from the lips of suffering men and women. And 
not the language only, but the incidents of actual life 
are worth more, as a storehouse of fresh poetry, than 
all the written poems of all the literatures. Here, 
more than elsewhere, the saying holds, that the literary 
language is a stagnant pool. The words which men use 
under pressure of real emotion, these are the running 
stream, the living spring. 

But it is not nature and human life only as they exist 
now, but also as we know them to have been in the 
past, that furnish ever fresh poetic materials. It has 
often been a marvel to me that English poets, with their 
own grand national history behind them, have made so 
little use of it. Since Shakespeare wrote his historical 
dramas, how few poetic blocks have been dug from that 
quarry ! What I now say applies to England, rather 
than to Scotland. Our picturesque historians of recent 
years, while they have done the work of partisans very 
effectually, have also been in some sort poets of the 
past. But how seldom have our regular singers set foot 
on that field ! The Laureate, no doubt, after having 
done his work in England's mythic region, has, late in 
his career, descended from those shadowy heights to the 
more solid ground and more substantial figures of her 
recorded history. Let us hail the omen, and hope that 
the coming generation of poets may follow him, and en- 
ter into the rich world of England's history and possess 
it. Surely England, if any land, supplies rich poetic 
material in her long, unbroken story, in her heroic 



20 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

names, in her battlefields scattered all the island over, 

where railways and factories have not obliterated them, 

"in the halls in which is hung 
Armory of the invincible knights of old," 

where hang, too, the portraits of her famous men, and 
in the homes in which they were reared, either still in- 
habited or mouldering 

" In all the imploring beauty of decay." 
These things remain to add life and color to that which 
chronicle and tradition and family histories have pre- 
served. How is it that our English poets have so 
turned their back on all this? I confess it has often 
pained me to see fine poetic faculty expended on a poem, 
long as Paradise Lost, upon some demigod or hero of 
Greece, in whom the Teutonic mind can never find more 
than a passing interest ; or in discussing hard problems 
of psychology, better left to the philosophers ; or in cut- 
ting the inner man to shreds in morbid self-analysis, 
while the great fresh fields of our own history lie all 
un visited. 

One word as to the relation which substance bears to 
form, thought to expression, in poetry. " Lively feel- 
ing for a situation and power to express it constitute the 
poet," said Goethe. " The power of clear and eloquent 
expression is a talent distinct from poetry, though often 
mistaken for it," says Dr. Newman. Into this large 
question, whether he can be called a poet who lacks the 
power of expressing the poetic thought that is in him, I 
shall not enter. On the one hand you have Goethe and 
Coleridge, maintaining that poetic conception and ex- 
pression are inseparable, — powers born in one birth. 
On the other hand, Wordsworth and Dr. Newman agree 
in holding that 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 21 

" many are the poets sown by nature, 
Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse.' 

As, however, the " vision," even if it exist, cannot reveal 
itself to others without the. " accomplishment " of ex- 
pression, there is little practical need to discuss the 
question. But while both of these powers are indis- 
pensable, they seem to exist in various proportions in 
different poets. One poet is strong in thought and sub- 
stance, less effective in form and expression. In another 
the case is exactly reversed. It is only in the greatest 
poets, and in those, when in their happiest mood, that 
the two powers seem to meet in perfect equipoise, — 
and that the highest thoughts are found wedded to the 
most perfect words. Among well-known poets, Cowper 
and Scott have been noted as stronger in substance than 
in form; Pope and Gray, as poets in whom finish of 
style exceeds power of thought ; Moore, as hiding com- 
monplace sentiment under elaborate ornament. On the 
whole, it may be said that the early poets of any nation 
are for the most part stronger in substance than in style ; 
whereas, with advancing time, power of expression grows, 
style gets cultivated for its own sake, so that in later^ 
poets expression very often outruns thought. 

As an illustration of the wide limits within which two 
styles of expression, each perfect after its kind, may 
range, take two poems, well known to every one : Words- 
worth's Resolution and Independence, and Mr. Tenny- 
son's Palace of Art. Each poem well represents the 
manner of its author. In one thing only they agree, 
that each contains a moral truth, though to teach this 
is not probably the main object of either. In all other 
respects, in their manner of conveying the truth, in 
form, coloring, and style of diction, no two poems could 
well be more unlike. 



22 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

"Wordsworth's poem sets forth that alternation of two 
opposite moods to which imaginative natures are ex- 
posed, — the highest exaltation, rejoicing in sympathy 
with the joy of Nature, quickly succeeded by the deep- 
est despondency. After these two moods have been 
powerfully depicted, admonition and restoration come 
from the sight of a hard lot patiently, even cheerfully, 
borne by a poor leech-gatherer, who wanders about the 
moors plying his trade. This sight acts as a tonic on 
the poet's spirit, bracing him to fortitude and content. 

The early poem of the Laureate begins by personify- 
ing the Spirit of Art, who speaks forth her own aims 
and desires, her one purpose to enjoy Beauty always 
and only by herself, for her own selfish enjoyment — 
the artistic temptation to worship Beauty, apart from 
truth and goodness. You will remember how she de- 
scribes the Palace, so royal, rich, and wide, with which 
she surrounded herself, — the life she led there ; how, 
after a time, smitten to the core with a sense of her 
own inward poverty and misery, she loathes herself in 
despair. 

Wordsworth's " plain imagination and severe " moves 
rapidly from the most literal, every-day commonplace, 
into the remotest distance of brooding phantasy, before 
which the old man and the visible scene entirely dis- 
appear, or are transfigured. And the diction moves with 
the thought, passing from the barest prose to the most 
elevated poetic style. Thus, if on the one hand you 
have such lines as 

" To me that morning did it happen so," 
and 

" How is it that you live? and what is it you do? " 

you have on the other — 






THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 23 

** I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, 
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride ; 
Of him who walked in glory and in joy, 
Following his plough along the mountain side: 
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, 
But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness." 

You have also the strong lines likening the sudden 
apparition of the old man on the moor to a huge boulder- 
stone. 

" Couched on the bald top of an eminence ; " 

then to a sea-beast that has crawled forth on a sand- 
bank or rock-ledge to sun itself. Then rising into — 

" Upon the margin of that moorish flood, 
Motionless as a cloud, the old man stood ; 
That heareth not the loud winds when they call, 
And moveth all together, if it move at all." 

Many may object to the appearance of the plain lines 
in the poem as blemishes. To me, while they give great 
reality to the whole, they enhance, I know not how 
much, the power of the grander lines. I would not, if I 
could, have them otherwise. 

Mr. Tennyson again, from end to end of his poem, 
pitches the style at a high artistic level, from which he 
never once descends. Image comes on image, picture 
succeeds picture, each perfect, rich in color, clear in 
outline. When you first read the poem, every stanza 
startles you with a new and brilliant surprise. There 
is not a line which the most fastidious could wish away. 

In another thing the two poems are strikingly con- 
trasted. Wordsworth's is almost colorless ; there is 
only a word or two in it that can suggest color. Mr. 
Tennyson's is inlaid throughout with the richest hues, 
yet so deftly as not to satiate, but only to bring out more 
fully the purpose of the poem. In reading the one you 
feel as though you were in the midst of a plain bare 



24 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

moor, out of which the precipiced crags and blue mounk- 
ain-peaks soar aloof, not inharmoniously, but all the 
more impressively, from the dead level that surrounds 
them. In the other you are, as it were, walking along 
some high mountain level, which, without marked eleva- 
tion or depression anywhere, yields on either side wide 
outlooks over land and sea; 

I have alluded to these two poems, not by any 
means to estimate their comparative excellence, but as 
instances in which two great poets give expression to 
high thoughts, each in his own characteristic style, and 
that style perfect according to its kind and aim. 

In these two instances the idea and the expression are 
well balanced, in just equipoise. 

But it is otherwise with much of the poetry, or at- 
tempts at poetry, of the present time. A tincture of 
letters is now so common, that the number of those who 
can versify is greatly increased, and the power of expres- 
sion often lamentably outruns the thought. There is 
one marked exception to this, which will occur to every 
one, in the case of one of the most prominent living 
poets, in whom the power of lucid utterance halts, 
breathlessly and painfully, behind the jerks and jolts of 
his subtle and eccentric thought. But this is not a 
common fault. Rather, I should say, we are overdone 
with superabundant imagery and luscious melody. We 
are so cloyed with the perfume of flowers, that we long 
for the bare bracing heights, where only stern north 
winds blow. Or to put it otherwise : in many modern 
poems you are presented with a richly-chased casket ; 
you open it, and find only a common pebble within. 
This is a malady incident to periods of late civilization 
pid of much criticism. Poetry gets narrowed into an 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 25 

art, — an art which many can practise, but which, when 
practised, is not worth much. How many are there in 
the present day, of more or less poetical faculty, who can 
express admirably whatever they have to say, but that 
amounts to little or nothing ! At best it is but a collec- 
tion of poetic prettinesses, sometimes of hysteric exag- 
gerations and extravagances. Had these men, with their 
fine faculty of expression, only made themselves seri- 
ously at home in any one field of thought, had they ever 
learned to love any subject for its own sake, and not 
merely for its artistic capabilities, had they ever laid a 
strong heart-hold of any side of human interest, no one 
can say what they might not have achieved ; but for 
want of this grasp of substance the result is in so many 
cases what we see. Not till some stirring of the stag- 
nant waters be vouchsafed, some new awakening to the 
higher side of things, not till some mighty wind blows 
over the souls of men, will another epoch of great and 
creative poetry arise. 

The views which I have set forth in this Lecture will, 
if they are true, determine what value we ought to place 
on that modern theory which maintains " the moral in- 
difference of true art." The great poet, we are sometimes 
told nowadays, must be free from all moral preposses- 
sions ; his one business is " to see life steadily and see it 
whole," and to represent it faithfully as it is. The high- 
est office of the poet is " to aim at a purely artistic ef- 
fect." To him goodness and vice are alike, — his work 
is to delineate each impartially, and let no shade of pref- 
erence intrude. 

It is to Dramatic Poetry, I suppose, that this theory 
is mainly intended to apply, and from the Drama it ia 
supposed to receive most confirmation. Be it so. 



26 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

It is then the aim of the dramatist truly to delineate 
character of every hue, the base equally with the noble, 
to represent life, in all its variety, just as it is. But is 
not life itself full of morality ? Is not the substance and 
texture of it moral to the core ? Must not the contem- 
plation of human characters, as they are, awaken liking 
or dislike, moral admiration or moral aversion, in every 
healthy mind? And must not the poetry which rep- 
resents truly that substance be moral too ? Must not 
the spectacle of the characters depicted stir natural 
feelings of love or dislike, as well in the poet who draws, 
as in the reader who contemplates them ? Did not 
Sophocles have more delight in Antigone than in 
Ismene ? Did not Shakespeare admire and love Des- 
demona and Cordelia ; hate and despise Iago and Ed- 
mund? 

This theory of the moral indifference of Art originated, 
I believe, in great measure, with Goethe, and has been 
propagated chiefly by his too exclusive admirers. I 
should be content to rest the whole question on a com- 
parison of the moral spirit that prevades the dramas 
of Goethe and those of Shakespeare. It has been as- 
serted, I believe with truth, that it was the existence of 
this very theory in Goethe, or rather of that element in 
him whence this theory was projected, which shuts him 
out from the highest place as a dramatist, and marks the 
vast interval between him and Shakespeare. Goethe's 
moral nature was, it has been said, of a somewhat limp 
texture, with few strong " natural admirations," so that his 
dramas are wanting in those moral lights and shadows 
which exist in the actual world, and give life and outline 
to the most manly natures. His groups of characters 
are most of them morally feeble and shadowy. Shake- 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 27 

speare, on the other hand, being a whole, natural man, 
" the moral, imaginative, and intellectual parts of him 
do not lie separate," but move at once and all together. 
Being wholly unembarrassed with aesthetic theories, his 
" poetical impulse and his moral feelings are one." He 
does not conceal or explain away the great moral eleva- 
tions and depressions that you see in the world. He 
paints men and women as they are, with great moral 
differences, not withholding admiration from the noble, 
contempt and aversion from the base. Therefore, 
though we do not say that he is faultless, do not deny 
that there are things in him we could wish away, yet, 
taken as a whole, there breathes from his works a nat- 
ural, healthy, bracing, elevating spirit, not to be found 
in the works of Goethe. Every side, every phase of 
human nature is there faithfully set down, but to the 
higher and better side is given its own natural predomi- 
nance. With the largest tolerance ever man had for 
all human infirmity, the widest sympathy with all men, 
seeing even the soul of good that may lie in things evil, 
there is in him nothing of that neutral moral tint, which 
is weakness in poetry as truly as in actual life. 

Neither do we find in this master-dramatist any trace 
of another theory, born of morbid physiology, as the for- 
mer of morbid aesthetics, by which character, personality, 
the soul are explained away, and all moral energy disap- 
pears before such solvents as outward circumstances, an- 
tecedent conditions, heredity, and accumulated instincts. 
Shakespeare had looked that way too, as he had most 
ways ; but he leaves the announcement of this modern 
view, or one closely allied to it, to Edmund, one of his 
basest characters, and even he scorns it. 

If the divorce of poetry from morality will not hold 



28 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

in the drama, in which alone it can show any semblance 
of argument, far less can it be applied to poetry in its 
other forms, epic, lyric, meditative. If it be not the 
function of poetry in these forms to give beautiful ex- 
pression to the finer impulses, to the higher side of life, 
I see not that it has any function at all. If poetry be 
not a river, fed from the clear wells that spring on the 
highest summits of humanity, but only a canal to drain 
off stagnant ditches from the flats, it may be a very use- 
ful sanitary contrivance, but has not, in Bacon's words, 
any " participation of divineness.' 

Poets who do not recognize the highest moral ideal 
known to man do, by that very act, cut themselves off: 
from the highest artistic effect. It is another exemplifi- 
cation of that great law of ethics which compasses all 
human action " whereby the abandonment of a lower 
end in obedience to a higher aim, is made the very con- 
dition of securing the lower one." For just as the 
pleasure-seeker is not the pleasure-finder, so he who 
aims only at artistic effect by that very act misses it. 
To reach the highest art, we must forget art, and aim 
beyond it. Other gifts being equal, the poet, who has 
been enabled to apprehend the highest moral concep- 
tion, has in that gained for himself a great poetic van- 
tage-ground. 

• To bring this to a point : The Christian standard we 
take to be the highest known among men. Must then, 
you may ask, all great poets, at least in modern times, 
in order to reach the highest poetic excellence, be Chris- 
tians ? Goethe, you say, made little of Christianity ; 
Shelley abjured k: are we on that account to deny 
that they rank among the great poets of the world? 

To this it may be replied, — First, that though they 



*s 



THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 29 

did not consciously hold it, they could not escape at 
least some unconscious influence from the religion which 
surrounded them. Secondly, that had their prejudice 
against Christianity been removed, could they have 
frankly owned its divinity, instead of being losers they 
would have gained hardly less as poets than as men. 
For lack of this it is that there lie hidden in the human 
spirit tones, the truest, the most tender, the most pro- 
found, which these poets have never elicited. 

Let it not be said that I have been advocating secta- 
rian views, — trying to bind poetry to the service of a 
sect. It is true that poetry refuses to be made over as 
the handmaid of any one philosophy or view of life or 
system of belief. But it is equally true that it natu- 
rally allies itself only with what is highest and best in 
human nature ; and in whatever philosophy or belief 
this is enshrined, thence poetry will draw its finest im- 
pulses. 

There are only two views with which it has nothing 
in common. One is the view of life which they hold 
whose motto is " Nil admirari." With this it can have 
no fellowship, for it cuts off the springs of emotion at 
their very sources. The other antipode is the philoso- 
phy which denies us any access to truth, except through 
the senses ; which refuses to believe anything which 
scalpel, or crucible, or microscope cannot verify ; which 
reduces human nature to a heap of finely granulated, 
iridescent dust, and empties man of a soul and the uni- 
verse of a God. Such a philosophy would leave to po- 
etry only one function, — to deck with tinsel the coffin 
of universal humanity. This is a function which she 
declines to perform. 

But we need have no fears that it will come to this. 



30 THE PROVINCE OF POETRY. 

Poetry will not succumb before materialism, or agnosti- 
cism, or any other cobweb of the sophisticated brain. 
It is an older, stronger birth than these, and will survive 
them. It will throw itself out into fresh forms ; it will 
dig for itself new channels ; under some form suited to 
each age, it will continue through all time, for it is an 
undying effluence of the soul of man. 

That this effluence has on the whole been benign in 
its tendency, who can doubt ? I have wished through- 
out not to indulge in exaggeration, nor to claim for 
poetry more than every one must concede to it. Im- 
agination may be turned to evil uses. It may minister, 
it has sometimes ministered, to the baser side of human 
nature, and thrown enchantment over things that are 
vile. But this has been a perversion, which depraves 
the nature of poetry, and robs it of its finest grace. 
Naturally it is the ally of all things high and pure ; 
among these is its home ; its nature is to lay hold of 
these, and to bring them, with power and attractiveness, 
home to our hearts. It is the prerogative of poetry to 
convey to us, as nothing else can, the beauty that is in 
all nature, to interpret the finer quality that is hidden 
in the hearts of men, and to hint at a beauty which lies 
behind these, a light " above the light of setting suns," 
which is incommunicable. In doing this it will fulfil 
now, as of old, the office which Bacon assigned to it, 
and will give some " shadow of satisfaction to the spirit 
of man, longing for a more ample greatness, a more per- 
fect goodness, and a more absolute variety " than here 
it is capable of. 



CHAPTER II. 

CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

We are apt to fancy that the powers which poet and 
philosopher put forth are of a quite different order from 
those which we feel in ourselves, and that commonplace 
people and every-day life have nothing in common with 
their high functions. It is not so. The most unlettered 
peasant performs the same kind of mental acts as the 
poet and the philosopher, only in these last the powers 
work with a higher energy. Of all men it is true that 
they feel and energize first, they reflect and judge after- 
wards. First comes impulse, emotion, active outgoing ; 
then reflection, analyzing the impulse, and questioning 
the motive. 

Now these two moods of mind, which go on alter- 
nately in every human heart, go on in the poet not less, 
but more, — the same powers are working in him, only 
in fuller, intenser energy. First comes his creative 
mood. He has given him a vision of some truth, some 
beautiful aspect of things, which for a time fills his 
whole heart and imagination ; he seizes it, moulds it 
into words, and while he does so his soul is all aglow 
with emotion, — so strong emotion, that the intellectual 
power he is putting forth is almost unconscious, almost 
ost sight of. Then, when the inspiring heat has cooled 
down, the time of judgment comes on : he contemplates 
the work of his fervid hours, criticises it, as we say, sees 
its shortcomings, weighs its value. 



32 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

This, which goes on in the minds of individual men, 
who have the creative gift, is seen reflected on a large 
scale in the literary history of nations and of the race. 
The world has had its great creative epochs more fre- 
quently^it has had its great critical ones. The great 
creative epochs are not those in which criticism most 
flourishes, neither are the epochs which are most critical 
those which have most creative force. In nations as in 
men, the two moods seem to alternate, and, in some 
degree, to exclude each other. 

What happened in Greece we all know. Her crea- 
tive energy had spent itself, the roll of her great poets 
was complete, before there appeared anything which 
can be called criticism. When Aristotle came, and, in 
his prosaic, methodical way, laid line and plummet to 
the tragedians, took their dimensions, and drew from 
these his definitions and canons for tragedy, the tragic, 
indeed the whole poetic impulse of Greece had ex- 
hausted itself. 

Then followed the Alexandrian era, — the first epoch 
of systematic criticism which the world had seen. Be- 
hind it lay the whole land which Hellenic genius in its 
prime had traversed, and had covered with artistic mon- 
uments. Looking back on these, the Alexandrian men 
began to take stock of them, to appraise, arrange, edit 
them, to extract from them the forms of speech and 
rules of grammar, — and in fact to construct, as far as 
they could, a whole critical apparatus. Learned editors, 
compilers, grammarians, critics, these men were ; but 
poets, makers, creators, that it was denied them to be. 
Useful and laborious men, doing work which has passed 
into the world's mental life, but not interesting, stimu- 
lative, refreshing, as the true poets are. 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 33 

A poet, no doubt, Alexandria had, — the firstfruits of: 
its literature,, the most finished specimen of its spirit. 
In him we have a sample of what the most extensive 
learning and finished taste, without genius, can do. He 
wrote, we are told, 800 works, and poems innumera- 
ble. All that great talents, vast learning, unwearied 
industry, and great literary ambition could do, he did. 
The result is not encouraging. We do not in these 
latter days desire to see more Calliraachi; one Calli- 
machus is enough for the world. 

I have alluded to Alexandria and Callimachus, be- 
cause some seem to think that we in England, as far as 
poetry is concerned, have now reached our Alexandrian 
era, that it is in vain we shut our eyes to the fact, that 
our wisdom is to accept it, and to try to make the best 
of it. 

This is the subject I wish to consider to-day, — 
"Whether, looking back on the course of our poetic his- 
tory, and considering our present mental condition, 
there is good reason to believe that our creative, poetic 
energy has worked itself out, that our Alexandrian era 
has come. 

This rather depressing view of our poetical situation, 
as though it were the time of Alexandrian decadence, 
may perhaps seem to receive some countenance from an 
opinion put forth with much force by a living voice, 
which most Oxford men have probably heard, and 
which all are glad to hear, — my friend and my fore- 
runner in this chair, which he so greatly adorned. Mr. 
Arnold is never so welcome as when he speaks of po- 
etry and literature. Even when we may not agree with 
all he says, his words instruct and delight us ; for every 
word he speaks on these subjects is living, based on 



34 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

large knowledge, and on a high standard of excel- 
lence. 

It must not therefore be supposed that I wish to en- 
gage in controversy with my friend, but rather to enter 
into a friendly conversation with him on subjects inter- 
esting to both of us, if I first remind you of his view, 
and then try to supplement what he has said by some 
other considerations which, in his zeal for a larger, 
more enlightened knowledge, he has perhaps left un- 
expressed. 

He holds that the one work to which we are at pres- 
ent called, both in poetry and in all literature, is the 
work of a better, higher, more world-wide criticism, 
than any we have as yet known in England. And by 
criticism is meant not the old insular British prejudice, 
as it has been represented in the Edinburgh or the 
Quarterly Review, but " the disinterested endeavor to 
learn and propagate the best that is known and thought 
in the world." Real criticism, he says, is essentially 
the exercise of " curiosity as to ideas on all subjects, for 
their own sakes, apart from any practical interest they 
may serve ; it obeys an instinct prompting it to try to 
know the best that is known and thought in the world, 
irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the 
kind, and to value knowledge and thought, as they ap- 
proach this best, without the intrusion of any other con- 
siderations whatever." 

This is a view of criticism which, if it has a bearing 
on poetry, has a still more obvious bearing on other 
forms of literature, and hardly less on science. Crit- 
icism in this sense is but one phase, perhaps I should 
rather say another name, of that great historic method, 
which in our time has entered into and transformed 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 35 

every province of thought. Taking its stand on the 
high eminence to which all the past has been leading 
up, and casting a wide-sweeping eye backward on uni- 
versal literature, criticism, we are told, sees only two 
great creative epochs of poetry, one the age of .iEscby- 
lus and Sophocles, the other the age of Shakespeare. 

These two epochs were creative and fruitful, because 
in both a new and fresh current of ideas was let in on 
the world. There was a breaking-up of the old confin- 
ing limitations, an expansion all round of the mental 
horizon, and this condition of things is the most stim- 
ulating and exhilarating of mental influences. This 
bracing intellectual atmosphere, this fresh movement of 
ideas, was caused, in the case of Greece, by the national 
exaltation of mincf which followed the overthrow of the 
Persian, and by the sense of triumph, security, and ex- 
panding energy which every Athenian felt, while his 
country was building up her maritime empire, and Per- 
icles was placing the copestone on the structure. 

In Shakespeare's time like causes were at work, and 
created a similar expansion of men's thoughts. The 
Renaissance, after having done its work on the Conti- 
nent, had at last reached the shores of England, and 
created there the "New Learning." The Mediaeval 
Church fabric had been rent, and new light came in, as 
the barriers fell down. A new world had arisen beyond 
the Atlantic, on which the bravest of Englishmen were 
not ashamed to descend as buccaneers, and to draw fresh 
life from the wider ocean and larger earth opened to 
their adventure. 

In these two epochs, when great poets were born into 
the world, the time was propitious, and the result was 
•he great poetic creations which we know. The " men " 



36 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

and " the moment " had met ; that is the account of it. 
Two great creative epochs of poetry vouchsafed to the 
world — only two — no third. 

TTe had always fancied that the end of last aud the 
beginning of this century, the period embraced between 
1790 and 1825, had been, in England at least, such a 
creative period, that the outburst of native song which 
then took place made it one of the world's great poetic 
eras. But it seems that it is not so. 

We had imagined that, though the brotherhood of 
poets which then arose in England contained no Shake- 
speare, yet, taken all together, they formed a band so 
original, so energetic, so various, as to have made their 
era forever memorable while English literature lasts. 
This is a common — I am inclined to think, a not ex- 
aggerated — estimate of them. 

But the high critical view to which I have been re- 
ferring says, No. Ana* the reason it gives is this. The 
French Revolution, the prime moving force of Europe 
during that time, took in France too practical a turn, 
was bent too much on political results, and had ceased 
to supply that fine atmosphere of universal thought — 
" that current of ideas which animate and stimulate the 
creative force — such a current as moved the times of 
Pindar and of Sophocles in Greece, and of Shakespeare 
in England." In France the force of the Revolution 
was expended in carrying out political theories. At the 
same time in England the whole national life was spent 
in finding means of resisting those theories, and of 
curbing the madness of foreign ideas". Even the most 
thoughtful Englishmen lent themselves to this effort. 
Hence, in England, the first quarter of this century was 
a period of concentration, of insularity, not of expan- 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 37 

sion, of thought. This was not a benign atmosphere 

for creative minds to work in. The men of original 

genius were given us, but the outward conditions were 

not given. Therefore we cannot, according to this 

view, look back with complacency on the poetry which 

ushered in this century in our own country. And if we 

cannot so look back on the period before 1825, much 

less can we do so on anything that has succeeded it. 

Therefore we must stick to criticism. Criticism is the 

only function now allowed us. " Criticism first, — a 

time of true creative activity hereafter, when criticism 

has done its work." 

This is the view which has been advocated. Now 

consider its results. Had such high critical views been 

admitted in former times, how would it have thinned 

the ranks of England's poets ! What gaps it would 

have made in that noble line of singers, — 

" That, on the steady breeze of honor, sail 
In long procession calm and beautiful " ! 

It is one of the most characteristic things about our 
literature that the spirit of each time has passed into 
our poetry. The political changes of each age, the 
deeds men did, the thoughts they had, the change of 
manners that was going on, all these acted directly on 
the imagination of our countrymen, kindled their emo- 
tions, and embodied themselves in the poetry of the 
time. 

It has been truly said that " no one poet, however 
ample his range, represents all the tendencies of his 
time, but all the poets of any time taken together do." 
The same writer (Mr. Stopford Brooke) has expressed 
so well the historical nature of English poetry, as re- 
flecting the life of each age, that I cannot but quote his 
words : — - 



38 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

"If we want to get a clear idea of any period we 
must know all the poets, small and great, who wrote in 
it, and read them altogether. It would be really useful 
and delightful to take a single time, and read every line 
of fairly good poetry written in it, and then compare the 
results of our study with the history of the time. Such 
a piece of work would not only increase our pleasure in 
all the higher poetry of the time we study, but would 
give us grounds for philosophic studj r , and for greater 
enjoyment of the poetry of any other time. Above all, 
it would supply us with an historical element, which the 
writers of history, even at the present day, have so 
strangely neglected; the history of the emotions and 
passions which political changes worked, and which 
themselves influenced political change; the history of 
the rise and fall of those ideas, which especially touch 
the imaginative and emotional life of a people, and in 
doing so modify their whole development." 

It would be easy to illustrate the truth of this, and to 
show, by a survey of English poetry from Chaucer to 
our own day, how entirely every change in it reflects 
some change in national sentiment. I shall take but 
two instances. 

The long struggle between the Stuart kings and the 
new order of things, from Charles I. till the days of 
Prince Charles Edward, how faithfully is it reflected in 
the Jacobite songs and lyrics ! At first jaunty, trucu- 
lent, haughtily anti-plebeian, they then change into a 
pathetic wail of nameless singers for a lost cause and a 
departing glory, till at last they lend to the songs of 
Burns, of Lady Nairne, and of Walter Scott tender 
tones of imaginative regret for a vanished time. 

I suppose no lover of English poetry would willingly 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 39 

part with what Burns and Cowper have contributed to 
it. But what would have become of Burns, if, before 
pouring forth his passion-prompted songs, he had taken 
counsel with some learned critic, who told him that ere 
he allowed himself to sing, he must first know the best 
of what the world had felt and sung before him ? In- 
deed, after he had flung forth in his own vernacular 
those matchless songs, which have made the whole world 
his debtor, when he came to know the literati of his 
time, and to read more widely in English literature, he 
acknowledged that, had he known more, he would have 
dared less, nor have ventured on such unfrequented by- 
paths. Wider knowledge, that is, would have paralyzed 
his singing power. 

Again : Cowper was a scholar, and in his youth had 
seen something of what London could show him. In 
his manhood, from his Huntingdon seclusion, how much 
of England's homeliest scenery has he described; how 
much of England's best life and sentiment at the close 
of last century has he preserved for us ! But had some 
representative of high criticism come across him, and 
bidden him, before he essayed his Task, know all the 
best that the world had thought or said on the same 
subjects, how would the pen have dropped from his 
sensitive hand, and left the poetic world so much the 
poorer for his silence ! 

Gray, on the other hand, had fully laid to heart and 
acted on the counsels of a refined criticism. He knew 
whatever of best the world had produced before him. 
Behind his poetic outcome lay a great effort of thought 
and criticism, and we have the benefit of it in his scanty 
and fastidious contribution to English Poetry. I would 
not willingly underrate the author of the Elegy and of 



40 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

the Ode to Adversity; but, if the alternative were 
forced upon us, I do not think that we should be pre- 
pared to give up either Burns or Cowper in order to 
preserve Gray. 

It is natural that in a scholarly and academic atmos- 
phere, criticism, knowledge, and appreciation of the 
best should be highly prized, for this is just that which 
academic study can give, and which can hardly be got 
without it. But that which schools and universities can- 
not give is the afflatus, the native inspiration which 
originally produced that best. These are powerless to 
awake the voice of the divine Sibyl, which, " utter- 
ing things simple, unperfumed, and unadorned, reaches 
through myriads of years." If there is one truth which 
all past experience and all present knowledge teach, it 
is this : that the creative heat, the imaginative insight, 
the inspiration, which is the soul of poetry — that all 
this is something which learning and knowledge may 
stifle, but cannot generate. That talk about the Muses, 
and that invocation of their aid, which has long grown 
vapid and wearisome to us, had in its origin a real mean- 
ing. The ixrjviv aeiSe, 6ed, the earliest poets felt as a fact 
of experience. Something was given them — whence 
and how they knew not — only it was not their own 
invention, but given them from without, or from above, 
in some unnamable way, and utter it they must. Since 
the days of Homer this feeling of an inspiration from 
within has dwindled, and literary and artistic efforts have 
tried to do its work, but in vain. Even till this hour, 
when poetry is genuine, it originates in a high enthusi- 
asm, a noble passion overmastering the soul. 

Though the muse has been " shamed so oft by later 
Jyres on earth," that poets now "dare not call her from 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 41 

her sacred hill," yet we see the sense of a veritable in- 
spiration reappear in Milton in a higher form, other, yet 
the same. His " Sing, Heavenly Muse," and " Descend 
from Heaven, Urania," " The meaning, not the name, 
I call," — these are not empty words, as we know from 
what he tells us in prose of the manner and the spirit 
in which he prepared himself for song. 

Philosophers, who, themselves gifted with imagina- 
tion, understand its ways of working, acknowledge that 
there is about the origin of the poetic impulse some- 
thing which defies analysis, — born, not taught, — inex- 
plicable, and mysterious. Plato's few words upon this 
in the Ion are worth all Aristotle's methodical treatise 
on Poetry. To quote from that translation which in 
our day has made Plato an English classic, we have 
Socrates saying to Ion : " All good poets, epic as well 
as lyric, compose their beautiful poems, not as works of 
art, but because they are inspired and possessed. . . . 
For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and 
there is no invention in him until he has been inspired. 
. . . When he has not attained to this state he is power- 
less, and unable to utter his oracles. Many are the 
noble words in which poets speak of the actions which 
they record, but they do not speak of them by any rules 
of art ; they are inspired to utter that to which the 
Muse impels them, and that only." 

Plato further recognizes the truth that, though the 
first and original inspiration is in the poet, yet all who 
sympathize with and can rightly interpret him must be 
partakers of the same inspiration, though in a subdued 
and ever-lessening measure. Thus it is that he " com- 
pares the poets and their interpreters to a chain of mag- 
netic rings, suspended from one another and from a 



42 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

magnet. The magnet is the muse, and the large ring 
which comes next in order is the poet himself; then 
follow the rhapsodes and actors " (the critics, we might 
modernize it), " who are rings of inferior power ; and 
the last ring of all i3 the spectator" (or the reader of 
the poems). In these few sentences, making allowance 
for their antique form, there is more insight into the 
origin, or first awakening of the poetic impulse, than in 
anything contained in Aristotle's Poetics. 

It is a long descent from Plato to Lord Macaulay : 
but I take the latter as one of the most business-like 
of modern literary men, who could never be accused 
of being a victim to transcendentalism. Hear what he 
says in the introduction to his Essay on Dry den : " The 
man who is best able to take a machine to pieces, and 
who most clearly comprehends the manner of its work- 
ing, will be the man most competent to form another 
machine of similar power. In all the branches of phys- 
ical and moral science which admit of perfect analysis, 
he who can resolve will be able to combine. But the 
analysis which criticism can effect of poetry is necessa- 
rily imperfect. One element must forever elude its re- 
searches ; and that is the very element by which poetry 
is poetry." 

It is the old stor}^. The botanist can take the flower 
to pieces, show you the stamens, pistil, calyx, corolla, 
and all the rest of it, but can he put them together 
again ? Can he grasp or recreate the mysterious thing 
which held them together and made the living flower ? 
No ; the life has escaped his grasp. Now this quick 
life, this vivid impulse, this unnamable essence which 
makes poetry to be poetry — these, learning, criticism, 
study, reflection, may kill, as I have said, but cannot 
create. 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 43 

By the flashes of uncritical genius the world has 
gained its finest truths. When it is working at full 
power, it leaves behind criticism and all her works. At 
those moments when it is least conscious, it achieves 
most. In such rapt moods the poet, carried, far out of 
the ken even of his own intelligence, goes " voyaging 
through strange seas of thought alone," and overtakes 
new views, descries far heights of beauty and sublimity, 
which he in his sober moments can little account for. 
These are the far fetches of genius, which lie so much 
beyond its own forecast or deliberate aim, that it is only 
long after, if ever, that it comes to understand what it 
has done. This is that which is called truly inspiration. 

When Milton flung forth these lines — 

"How sweetly did they float upon the wings 
Of silence through the empty vaulted night, 
At every fall smoothing the raven down 
Of darkness till it smiled," 

do you suppose he could have quite explained his im- 
agery ? If we could call up Shakespeare and place be- 
fore him the various theories about Hamlet, do you think 
he would own any one of them as his own ? Would 
he not rather tell you with a smile that those clever fel- 
lows, the critics, knew far better than himself the thing 
that he meant to do ? 

But if the spontaneous impulse to soar must be de- 
layed till the poet has looked round and ascertained 
what soarings have been before attempted, and how 
much they have achieved, he will wait till the impulse 
is spent, the buoyancy gone. By all means let young 
poets cultivate themselves and their powers of expres- 
sion — take in as much knowledge as they can carry, 
without being oppressed by it. All the learning they 



44 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

can get, if it be really assimilated, if the native spring 
of spirit be not overborne, will come in to enrich and 
expand their imaginative range. But the knowledge, 
before it can be otherwise than hurtful, must have 
passed into their being, become entirely spontaneous, a 
part of themselves. If it be laborious learning, culture 
always conscious of what other poets have done, it may 
produce poetry which may please critics, not passion 
or fervid thought, which will reach the hearts of men. 
There is no little danger at the present day lest the 
poetic side of men's natures die of surfeit, be overlaid 
with a plethora of past literature. In common with 
many others, I am somewhat weary of criticism. We 
have heard the best of what she has to say, and would 
now beg her to stand aside for a season, and give spon- 
taneity its turn. 

Men of mature age, academic and literary persons, 
will probably be found giving other counsel, advising 
young genius to wait and learn. But these are not the 
poet's best advisers. If he desires to reach the great 
mass even of intelligent men, he must remember that 
they are not learned, and are not to be moved by poetry 
whose characteristic is its learning. Men who have 
passed forty will, no doubt, counsel caution and criti- 
cism ; but the far larger portion of the world are on the 
other side of forty, and we elders must regretfully ad- 
mit that it is among these the poets find their best and 
most sympathetic audience. 

It was not by vast stores of book-knowledge, not by 
great critical efforts, that the long line of England's 
poets has been maintained — that unbroken succession 
which has lasted so many centuries. To them the 
actual life of men, the face of nature, their own hearts, 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 45 

were their first and best teachers. To know these in- 
timately was their discipline — supplied their material. 
Books and book-learning were to them a quite subordi- 
nate affair. But the demand for a great critical effort 
as the prerequisite of creation seems to put that first 
which is not first, and to disallow that instinctive knowl- 
edge of man and of nature which is the poet's breath of 
life. This view of things probably originates in the 
conception of Goethe as the typical poet of the modern 
era. Whatever worth it may have in itself, one thing is 
certain, that, had it been believed by former generations, 
English poetry would have been other, certainly not 
better, than it is. 

However various the phases of our poetry have been, 
they have never been born of criticism, except perhaps 
in the days of Pope. If we may judge from all the 
past of poetry, criticism must be subordinate to passion, 
science to temperament, else the result will be frigid and 
without vitality. It remains forever true in the region 
of poetry that " immortal works are those which issue 
from personal feeling, which the spirit of system has not 
petrified." 

These last words are from a paper in a recent Quar- 
terly Review, entitled u A French Critic on Goethe." I 
had written nearly all the foregoing before I read that 
paper, and when I read it I found in it remarkable con- 
firmation of the views I had been trying to express. No 
one could doubt the hand from which that paper came ; 
and, since its first appearance, it has been acknowledged 
as Mr. Arnold's. Both the French critic and his Eng- 
lish commentator agree in the opinion that of all Goe- 
the's works the First Part of Faust is his masterpiece. 
And the reason they give is this : that, " while it has 



46 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

the benefit of Goethe's matured powers of thought, of 
his command over his materials, of his mastery in plan- 
ning and expressing, it possesses an intrinsic richness, 
color, and warmth. Having been early begun, Faust 
has preserved many a stroke and flash out of the days 
of its author's fervid youth." 

Both the French critic and his commentator agree 
that after this " a gradual cooling down of the poetic 
fire " is visible, "that in his later works the man of re- 
flection has overmastered the man of inspiration." The 
conclusion to which the Quarterly Reviewer comes on 
the whole is that Goethe's preeminence comes not from 
his being " the greatest of modern poets," but from his 
being " the clearest, largest, most helpful thinker of 
modern times." Exactly so. Nothing could more con- 
firm what I have been urging throughout than this esti- 
mate of Goethe endorsed by two so eminent authorities. 
In him we see on a great scale exemplified the tendency 
of the critic to mar the poet, of " science to overcome 
individuality, of reflection to chill poetic genius, of philo- 
sophic thought to prevail over the poetry of passion and 
of nature, of the spirit of system to crush or petrify per- 
sonal feelings." And this is one of the mental maladies 
from which the intellectual health of our times has most 
to dread. 

There are places where it might be unwise to hazard 
thoughts like these, lest we should discourage the im- 
portant duty of self-cultivation. But this is not one 
of those places. Is there not truth in the charge that 
to those who live here permanently there is something 
in the atmosphere of the place, call it criticism or what 
you will, which too much represses individuality ? 

I know that Oxford has many aspects, — wears very 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 47 

different looks, as seen from this side or from that. In 
the early years of discipleship, or viewed from a distance 
down long vistas of memory, or revisited after years of 
absence, she appears, what she truly is, the nurse of all 
high thoughts, the home of all pure and generous affec- 
tions. To those who are quite young there is perhaps 
no spot of English ground which sinks so deeply into 
the seats of emotion, or enters so intimately into all 
their study of imagination. 

But it is otherwise with older residents. For them 
the golden exhalations of the dawn are soon turned into 
the gray light of common day. For those on this side 
of graduation, whose manhood is harnessed into the 
duties of the place, what between the routine of work 
and the necessity of taking a side in public questions, 
and, above all, the atmosphere of omnipresent criticism 
in which life is lived here, original production becomes 
almost an impossibility. Any one who may feel within 
him the stirring of creative impulse, if he does not wish 
to have it frozen at its source, must, before he can cre- 
ate, leave the air of academic circles and the distracting 
talk of literary sets, and retire with his own impulses 
and thoughts into some solitude, where the din of these 
will not reach him. 

Will young poets excuse me if I make use of a very 
homely image ? They say that among the pea-fowl, the 
mother-bird, when she would rear her young, retires 
from farm and thoroughfare, and seeks the most silent 
places of the wood. There she sits, days and weeks, 
unseen even by her mate. At length, when the brood- 
ing-time is over, and her young are fully fledged, she 
walks forth some summer morning, followed by her 
brood, and displays them with pride before human 



48 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

homes. This, I take it, truly represents the way that 
poetic genius instinctively takes. Vital poems, whether 
short or long, slight or serious, are born ; not amid lit- 
erary talk, but in silence and solitude. Goethe, I be- 
lieve, said that he never could create anything, if he 
told his purpose to any one before it was completed. 

There may be some in this place to whom it will be 
given to shape the poetry of a new time. If criticism be 
needed, this generation has done that work to satiety. 
It has edited and reedited every great poet; found out 
all that can be known about each, and a good deal that 
cannot be known ; has counted and scheduled the per- 
centage of light endings and of weak endings, of end- 
stopt and run-on verses in every play, has compared, 
corrected, annotated, with most praiseworthy, and some- 
times with most wearisome exactness. It is surely time 
that this work should cease. For the coming generation 
we may hope some higher work remains to do — to en- 
joy the old and to create the new — to use whatever 
valuable result has been achieved by the laborious pro- 
cesses, and to burn up the heaps of rubbish in a fresh 
flame of creative impulse. The critic has had his day ; 
it is time the poet once more should have his. And if 
the national heart continues to beat strong, if the nation 
is fired with great, not with ignoble aims, then poets 
will arise to set to music the people's aspirations, and 
will " leave the critics well behind them." 

If any young spirit feels touched from within by the 
poetic breath, let him not be scared by the oft-heard 
saying — that the day of poetry is past. Macaulay 
indeed has maintained that as " knowledge extends and 
as the reason develops itself," the imaginative arts decay. 
It is the literary creed of Mr. Carlyle, several times 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 49 

announced, that the poetic form nowadays is an anach- 
ronism, that plain prose alone is welcome to him, that 
he grudges to see men of genius employ themselves in 
fiction and versifying, while reality stands in such need 
of interpreters. ft Reality is, as I always say, God's 
unwritten poem, which it needs precisely that a human 
genius should write and make intelligible to his less 
gifted brothers." To discuss these views fully would 
require several lectures, not the end of one. I can now 
but throw out a few suggestions. 

So far is it from being true that reason has put out 
imagination, that perhaps there never was a time when 
reason so imperatively called imagination to her aid, 
and when imagination entered so largely into all literary 
and even into scientific products. Imaginative thought, 
which formerly expressed itself but rarely except in 
verse, now enters into almost every form of prose ex- 
cept the barely statistical. Indeed, the boundary-lines 
between prose and poetry have become obliterated, as 
those between prose and verse have become more than 
ever rigid. Consider how wide is the range of thought 
over which imagination now travels, how vast is the 
work it is called upon to do. 

Even in the most rigorous sciences it is present, 
whenever any discoverer would pass beyond the frontiers 
of the known, and encroach on the unknown, by some 
wise question, some penetrating guess, which he labors 
afterwards by analysis to verify. This is what they 
call the scientific imagination. 

Again, what is it that enables the geologist, from the 

contortions of strata, a few scratchings on rock-surfaces, 

and embedded fossils here and there, to venture into 

" the dark backward and abysm of time," and recon- 

4 



50 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

struct and repeople extinct continents? What but a 
great fetch of imaginative power ? 

Again, history, which a former age wrote or tried to 
write with imagination rigorously suppressed, has of late 
rediscovered what Herodotus and Tacitus knew, that 
unless a true historic imagination is present to breathe 
on the facts supplied by antiquary and chronicler, a dead 
past cannot be made to live again. A dim and perilous 
way doubtless it is, leading by many a side-path down 
to error and illusion, but one which must be trod by the 
genuine historian, who would make the pale shadows of 
the past live. 

It is the same with every form of modern criticism — 
with the investigations into the origins of language, of 
society, and of religion. These studies are impossible 
without an ever-present power of imagination, both to 
suggest hypotheses and to vivify the facts which re- 
search has supplied. 

It thus has come to pass that, in the growing sub- 
division of mental labor, imagination is not only not 
discredited, but is more than ever in demand. So far 
from imagination receding, like the Red Indian, before 
the advance of criticism and civilization, the truth is 
that expanding knowledge opens ever new fields for its 
operation. Just as we see the produce of our coal and 
iron mines used nowadays for a hundred industries, to 
which no one dreamt of applying them a century ago, 
so imagination enters to-day into all our knowledge, in 
ways undreamt of till now. More and more it is felt that, 
till the fire of imagination has passed over our knowl- 
edge, and brought it into contact with heart and spirit, 
it is not really living knowledge, but only dead material. 

You say, perhaps, if imagination is now employed in 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 51 

almost every field of knowledge, does any remain over 
to express itself in poetry or metrical language ? Is any 
place left for what we used to know as poetry proper — 
thought metrically expressed ? I grant that the old 
limits between prose and poetry tend to disappear. If 
poetry be the highest, most impassioned thoughts con- 
veyed in the most perfect melody of words, we have 
many prose writers who, when at their best, are truly 
poets. Every one will recall passages of Jeremy Taylor's 
writings, which are, in the truest sense, not oratory, but 
poetry. Again, of how many in our time is this true? 
You can all lay your finger on splendid descriptions of 
nature by Mr. Ruskin, which leave all sober prose be- 
hind, and flood the soul with imagery and music like the 
finest poetry. 

As the highest instance of all I would name some of 
Dr. Newman's Oxford sermons. Many of these, instinct 
as they are with high spiritual thought, quivering with 
suppressed but piercing emotion, and clothed in words 
so simple, so transparent, that the very soul shines 
through them, suggest, as only great poems do, the 
heart's deepest secrets, and in the perfect rhythm and 
melody of their words seem to evoke new powers from 
our native language. 

If, then, so much imagination is drained off to enrich 
other fields of literature ; if, moreover, that peculiar 
combination of thought and emotion, which is the es- 
sence of poetry, now often finds vent in the form of 
prose, what place, you may ask, still remains for the use 
of metrical language ? Is verse, as a vehicle of thought, 
any longer genuine and natural ? Is it not an anachro- 
nism, a mere imitation of a past mode ? Have not the 
old channels which poetry used to fill now gone dry ? 



52 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

Perhaps we may say that it can hardly be denied that 
some of the old channels are dry, some of the early 
forms of poetry are not likely to be revivified. Old 
civilizations do not naturally give birth to epics. Such 
as they do produce are apt to be not of the genuine, but 
rather of the imitative sort. Again, of the drama, in 
its poetic form, it may well be doubted whether it has 
not gone into abeyance ; whether the world, at least 
this aeon of it, will see another revival of the drama as 
a living power. Its place has been in a great measure 
usurped by the modern novel (I wish they would con- 
dense their three volumes into one) — the modern novel, 
which depicts character, groups of men and women, their 
attitudes, looks, gestures, conversations, all, in fact, 
which reveals life with a power that versified dialogue 
can hardly rival. All this may be conceded. And yet 
there remain large and deep ranges of experience 
which, just because they are so deep and tender, find 
no natural and adequate outlet, but in some form of 
melodious and metrical language. Whether this shall 
be done by original genius, pouring new life and rhythm 
into the old and well-used metres, or whether, by strik- 
ing out novel and untried forms of metre, which may 
better chime with new cadences of thought, I shall not 
venture to say. 

You ask for reality, not fiction and filigree-work. 
Well, then, there are many of the most intense realities, 
of which poetic and melodious words are the fittest, I 
might say the only vehicle. There is the poetry of 
external nature ; not merely to paint its outward shows 
to the eye, but to reproduce those feelings which its 
beauty awakens. There are those aspects of history 
in which great national events kindle our patriotism, 



CRITICISM AND CREATION. 53 

or striking individual adventures thrill us with a sense 
of romance. There is the whole world of the affec- 
tions, those elements of our being which earliest wake 
and latest die. The deep home affections, the yearnings 
for those whom no more we see, the unutterable dawn- 
ings on the soul, as it looks towards the Eternal, — 
these which are the deepest, most permanent things in 
man, though the least utterable in forms of the under- 
standing, how are they to be even hinted at — expressed 
they can never be — except in a form of words the most 
rhythmical and musical man can attain to ? All this 
side of things, which more and more as life advances 
becomes to us the most real one — to this, poetry is the 
only form of human speech which can do justice. 

Again, there is the wide region of reflective or medi- 
tative thought, when the poet, brooding over the great 
realities of time and eternity, the same which engage 
the philosopher and the theologian, muses till his heart 
is hot within him, and the fire burns, and the burning at 
last finds vent in song. Of the deepest poets it has 
been truly said that they are 

"Haunted forever by the Eternal mind." 

To the poet in his brooding mood how often has there 
been vouchsafed a quick, penetrating glance, a satisfy- 
ing insight into the heart of things, such as sage and 
theologian have never attained? For instance, how 
many philosophies do we not find condensed into these 
simple, sincere lines of a poet whom Balliol College 
reared, and some still there know ? — 

" And yet when all is thought and said, 
The heart still overrules the head ; 
Still what we hope we must believe, 
And what is given us receive ; 



54 CRITICISM AND CREATION. 

Must still believe, for still we hope 

That in a world of larger scope, 

"What here is faithfully begun 

Will be completed, not undone." 
Lastly, there is religious poetry, the poetry that gives 
utterance to faith, to devotion, to aspiration. In these, 
as poetry found its earliest, so, I believe, it will find its 
latest springs of inspiration. Not only as the life of 
individual men, but as the life of the race advances, the 
deepest thoughts, the most earnest emotions, gather 
round religion and the secrets of which it alone holds 
the key. And the more we realize the inability of the 
logical faculty to grasp the things of faith, how it can- 
not breathe in the unseen world, and falls back para- 
lyzed when it tries to enter it, the more we shall feel 
that some form of song or musical language is the best 
possible adumbration of spiritual realities and the emo- 
tions they awaken. An expansion of the field of re- 
ligious poetry this century has seen, since the time when 
Wordsworth approached the world of nature with a sen- 
sitive love and reverence till then unknown, feeling 
himself and making others feel that the visible light 
that is in the heavens is akin to the light that lighteth 
every man, both coming from one centre. This unify- 
ing feeling, this more religious attitude seen in men's 
regard towards the visible world, may we not believe it 
to be the prelude of a wider unity of feeling, which 
shall yet take in, not nature only, but all truth and all 
existence ? And if some of our most earnest poets 
since Wordsworth's day, feeling too sensitively the un- 
bridged gulf between things seen and things unseen, 
have wasted themselves on intractable problems, and 
sung too habitually " in sad perplexed minors;" yet 
this shall not disturb our faith that the blue heaven is 



CRITICISM AND CREATION., 55 

behind the clouds, and that that heaven is the poet's 
rightful home. As growing time gives men more clearly 
to discern the real harmony between thought and fact, 
between the ideal and the actual world, the clouds will 
pass off the poet's soul, and leave him to sing aloud a 
free rejoicing worship. 

In the hope of that day we live, and, though we may 
not see it, yet we nothing doubt that come it will. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

We have been lately told on good authority that it is 
characteristic of the English poets that they deal mainly 
with " that great and inexhaustible thing called Life, 
and that the greatest of them deal with it most widely, 
most powerfully, most profoundly/' Further, it is added 
that in dealing with life they must deal with it morally ; 
for human life is moral to the very core. Exactly so ! 
What man is, what he does, what he should do, what he 
may become, what he may enjoy, admire, venerate, love, 
what he may hope,what is his ultimate destiny, — these 
things are never absent from the thoughts of great poets, 
and that not by accident, but from their very essence as 
poets. 

What Horace said of Homer holds even more emphat- 
ically of other great ones in the poetic brotherhood : — 

" Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, 
Rectius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit." 

As the late Professor Conington translates the lines — 

"What's good, what's bad, what helps, what hurts, he shows, 
Better in verse than Crantor does in prose." 

Not that they prove, moralize, or preach ; but we learn 
from being in their company, from the atmosphere 
which they breathe, and to which they admit us, — learn 
perhaps more readily, though indirectly, than from the 
lessons of professed philosophers, moralists, and even 
preachers. 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 57 

This truth, that the moral is the essential aspect of 
life, and that in it poetry has its true home, we are glad 
to hear reechoed from quarters whence we should hardly 
have looked for it. To many it had seemed so obvious 
that it scarcely needed to be stated — so mere a truism 
as to be almost a platitude. But of late the theory that 
poetry and all art is morally indifferent ; that vice, if 
only it be artistically treated ; that unmoral or even 
immoral sides of life, if imaginatively rendered, are as 
well fitted for poetry as what we have been accustomed 
to regard as the truest and highest views, — all this has 
been so often reiterated, and sometimes with so much 
ability, that one was almost tempted to fancy that this 
might be the coming faith, and that to hold any other 
was an old-world prejudice. 

Let us then take courage, and accept for the time, 
as settled, the old conviction that the moral substance 
of human nature is the soil on which true poetry grows, 
that the poetry of life must be moral, since life itself is 
essentially moral. But what do we mean by the moral 
substance of life ? What is it that gives moral tone 
and color to the life of each individual man ? Is it not 
the things he admires, loves, longs for ? the sum, in 
short, of the desires, affections, hopes, aims, by which 
he lives ? These make up the moral substance of each 
man's life; these create the spiritual air he breathes. 
But objects, which are adequate to the finer affections, 
cannot he found within the mere world of sense ; phe- 
nomena, however rich and varied, are not enough for 
any living, feeling man. Even persons, however loved, 
cannot satisfy him, if these are thought of as only tran- 
sitory. Some foundation the heart needs to rest on, 
which shall be permanent, secure, and stable. Where 



58 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

is this element to be found? Not in the maxims of 
moralists, nor in the abstractions of the schools. " I 
cannot cordialize with a mere ens rationis," said the late 
Alexander Knox ; and so would say every man with a 
warm heart throbbing within him. Leave moral ab- 
stractions, and categorical imperatives, to the philos- 
opher, who has lived so long by mere intellect, that 
everything else is dried out of him. But man, as man, 
needs something more quick and vital, something at least 
as living as his own beating heart, something akin to his 
own personality, to commune with. And if man, much 
more the true poet, who has within him all the ele- 
ments that make man, only these carried to their high- 
est power. 

The truth is that poetry has this in common with re- 
ligion, that it lives by that which eye hath not seen, nor 
ear heard. Deny this, and it dies ; confine it to mere 
appearances, whether phenomena of the outward sense, 
or of the inner consciousness, and it is dried up at its 
very source. Religion of course turns the eye directly on 
the unseen, and the spiritual objects that are there ; po- 
etry, on the other hand, finds its materials in the things 
seen ; but it cannot deal with these imaginatively, can- 
not perform on them its finer function, until it draws 
upon the unseen, and penetrates things visible with a 
light from behind the veil. So far then poetry and re- 
ligion are akin, that both hold of the unseen, the super- 
sensible. But we must not press the resemblance too 
far. Both, it is true, draw upon the invisible, but they 
turn towards it different sides of our nature, apprehend 
it by different faculties, use it for different ends. Re- 
ligion lays hold on the unseen world mainly through 
conscience and the spiritual affections, and seeks to 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 59 

bring all that it apprehends to bear on life, conduct, 
and the soul's health. On this practical end it insists, 
unless it is a merely sentimental religion. On the 
other hand, poetry, as poetry, has nothing to do with 
conduct and action. Contemplation is its aim and end. 
It longs to see the vision of the beautiful, the noble, 
and the true ; and that spectacle, when granted, suffices 
it. Beyond the contemplation of beauty and goodness 
it does not seek to go. Herein lie the weakness and 
the temptation not of actual poets only, but of all ar- 
tistic persons. They feel keen delight in the sight of 
things noble, are emotionally thrilled by them, strive to 
find adequate expression for them, and are content to 
end there. A part of their being, their imagination and 
emotions, touches the ideal, but their will remains un- 
affected. Their ideals do not necessarily rule their life. 
They are content to be sayers of fine things, not doers 
of them. This, I suppose, is the moral of that early 
poem of the Laureate's, The Palace of Art. Hence 
perhaps arises the unsatisfactoriness of the lives of so 

many 

"Mighty poets in their misery dead." 

The splendid vision they saw contrasts too sadly with 
the actual lives they lived. 

But without pursuing this train of thought, we may 
observe, that, whenever a poet has attained to a really 
high impassioned strain, it has not been in virtue of 
what mere eye or ear discovered, but because, while he 
saw things visible, and heard things audible, he was 
haunted by the sense that there was in them something 
more behind ; and just in proportion as he felt and 
hinted this something more, the work he has done has 
risen in true nobility. This will appear more plainly, 



60 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

if we look at the two great fields in which the poet 
works, the world of Nature, and the world of man. 

I. With regard to the first of these, it might seem 
that any one who has to deal with the visible world 
should confine himself to its visible features, and not 
meddle with anything beyond. But a little reflection 
will show that it is not so. For what is it in Nature 
that especially attracts the poet, that he is gifted beyond 
other men to feel, to interpret, and express ? Is it not 
the beauty that is in the face of Nature ? Now consider 
what this beauty is, what it means, how it is appre- 
hended. It is a very wonderful thing, both about our- 
selves and the world we live in, that, as in our own in- 
ward nature, to the gift of life has been added the sense 
of pleasure, so in the outward world, to the usefulness 
of it has been added its beauty. The use and the beauty 
are two aspects of Nature, distinct, yet inseparable. 
This thought, though not new, has been brought out 
with such peculiar power by the late Canon Mozley, 
that in some sort he has made it his own. In that ser- 
mon of his on Nature, well known, I doubt not, to many 
here, he says, " The beauty is just as much a part of 
Nature as the use ; they are only different aspects of the 
self-same facts." The same laws which make the useful- 
ness make also the beauty. " It is not that the mecha- 
nism is painted over, in order to disguise the deformity 
of machinery, but the machinery itself is the painting ; 
the useful laws compose the spectacle. . . ."All that 
might seem the superfluities of Nature are only her 
most necessary operations under another view, her or- 
nament is but another aspect of her work ; and in the 
very act of laboring as a machine, she also sleeps as a 
picture." In the physical world, the laws, their work- 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 61 

ing, and their use, are the domain of science. The 
beauty which accompanies their working, — this is the 
special object of the poet, and of the painter. 

But consider what this beauty is. Of this that cer- 
tainly is true which Bishop Berkeley asserted of all 
outward things — its " esse " is " percipi." Unless it is 
felt, perceived by an intelligent soul, it does not exist. 
The forms, the motions, the colors of Nature, taken 
alone, do not constitute beauty. Not till these enter in 
and pass through the medium of a feeling heart can 
the beauty be said to exist. You cannot find it by any 
mere search into the physical facts, however far back 
you press your analysis of them. The height, the depth, 
the expanse, the splendor, the gloom, — these do not in 
themselves contain it, do not account for it, without the 
presence of a soul to perceive and feel them, any more 
than the instrument accounts for the music, without the 
musician's hand to touch it. 

The feeling for the beauty by which the visible world 
is garmented ranges through many gradations, from a 
mere animal pleasure up to what may be called a spirit- 
ual rapture. 

' The first and lowest is the mere exhilaration of the 
animal spirits, stimulated by fresh air, fine weather, blue 
sky, fine vi$ws of sea and land. This need not neces- 
sarily be more than an animal enjoyment, an excitement 
of the bodily nerves, unaccompanied by any fine emo- 
tion, or any high thought. 

The second stage is that enjoyment which aesthetic 
natures feel at the sight of gorgeous coloring, or delicate 
tints, or symmetry of form and outline, the beautiful 
curve of clouds, their silver lines or rich transparencies. 
One is almost at a loss to say whether, in this delight, 



62 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

exquisite as it often is, there is necessarily present any 
spiritual element or not. Perhaps there is no poet in 
whom pure sensuous delight in the colors and forms of 
nature is more prominent than in Keats. Take his Ode 
on Au'umn, for instance. Here all the sights and sounds 
of a Devonshire autumn are received into a most re- 
sponsive soul, and rendered back in most exquisite ar- 
tistic form. Or take a well known-passage from the 
same poet's Eve of St. Agnes : — 

" A casement high and triple-arched there was, 
All garlanded with can-en imageries, 
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
And diamonded with panes of quaint device 
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, 
As are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings ; 
And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, 
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings. 

"Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon; 
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, 
And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 
She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest, 
Save wings, for heaven : Porphyro grew faint; 
She knelt so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint." 

It is difficult to believe that any poet could enjoy, 
as Keats did, the sensuous beauty which is in the face 
of Nature, and in works of Art, and not be carried far- 
ther, and led to ask, what does this visible beauty mean, 
what hint does it give about that universe of which it 
forms so essential a part ? 

This leads to the third stage in the upward ascent 
towards the higher perception of visible beauty. This 
is what may be called the moral stage, when some scene 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 68 

of the external world not so much imparts sensuous 
delight, as awakens within us moral emotion. That it 
is natural for the outward world to do this is seen in the 
fact that all languages employ moral or emotional terms 
to describe, not only the impressions which a scene 
creates, hut the scene itself. Landscapes are universally 
spoken of as cheerful or melancholy, peaceful or wild, 
pensive, solemn, or awful. Terms, you will observe, all 
taken, not from physical, hut from moral things. No 
physical features, height, depth, expanse, contain these 
qualities in themselves, but they awaken these feelings 
in us, — why, we know not, but they do. These qual- 
ities are not in outward things taken by themselves, nor 
are they wholly in the soul ; but when the outward ob- 
ject and the soul meet, then these emotions awake with- 
in us. They are a joint result of the soul of man and 
the objects fitted to produce them coming in contact. 
Hence arises that mystical feeling about Nature which 
forms so large an element in modern poetry ; and which, 
when genuine and not exaggerated, adds to poetry a new 
charm, because it reveals a real truth as to the relation 
in which Nature and the human soul stand to each other. 
Of this feeling Wordsworth's poetry is, of course, the 
great storehouse. As one sample, out of a thousand, of 
the vivid way in which a scene may be described by the 
feeling it awakens, rather than by its physical features, 
take his poem Glen Almain or the Narrow Glen. 

In this "upward gradation the last and highest stage 
is, when not merely moral qualities are suggested, but 
something more than these. 

In many persons, and not in poets only, a beautiful 
sunrise, or a gorgeous sunset, or the starry heavens on 
a cloudless night, create moral impressions, and some- 



64 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

thing more ; these sights suggest to them, if vaguely, 
yet powerfully, the presence of Him from whom come 
both Nature and the emotions it awakens. The tender 
lights that fleet over sea and sky are to them 

"signallings from some high land 
Of One they feel, but dimly understand." 

As they gaze, they become aware that they are admitted 

not only to catch a glimpse into the Divine order and 

beauty, but to stand, for a time, in greater nearness to 

Him who makes that order and beauty. 

The sublime rapture which it is given to some hearts 

to feel in the presence of such sights is perhaps nowhere 

more finely rendered than in a passage of the First 

Book of The Excursion, in which Wordsworth describes 

the feelings of the Young Wanderer, in presence of a 

sunrise among the mountains : — 

" For the growing youth 
What soul was his, when from the naked top 
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun 
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked — 
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, 
And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay 
In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, 
And in their silent faces did he read 
Unutterable love ! Sound needed none, 
Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank 
The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form 
All melted into him; they swallowed up 
His animal being; in them did he live, 
And by them did he live ; they were his life. 
In such access of mind, in such high hour 
Of visitation from the living God, 
Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired. 
No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request ; 
Rapt into still communion which transcends 
The imperfect offices of prayer and praise, 
His mind was a thanksgiving to the power 
That made him ; it was blessedness and love." 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 65 

In this fine passage, observe, there is little — hardly 
one expression (only " the solid frame of earth " and 
" ocean's liquid mass ") — that appeals to the outward 
eye ; no shapes of cloud nor gorgeous gildings ; only 
the feelings and aspirations which these awaken in a 
pure, high-strung soul. Yet these feelings, once set 
vibrating, call up more vividly than the most elaborate 
physical description could have done, the whole outward 
scene — its colors, its shapes, its glory ; and how much 
more besides ? 

This is, I believe, characteristic of Wordsworth's best 
descriptions of Nature, — he touches first the soul, the 
spirit, evokes at once the moods into which they are 
thrown by Nature's looks, and through the spirit reaches 
the eye and the senses more powerfully, after a more 
ethereal fashion, than if these had been directly ap- 
pealed to. In this and many another such passage of 
the same poet is seen the truth of that oft-repeated say- 
ing of Mr. Ruskin, that " all great art is the expression 
of man's delight in the work of God." This is true ; it 
is also true that the sight of natural beauty has no tend- 
ency, of itself, to make men religious. 

II. Poets there have been who have begun with Nat- 
ure, whose imagination has been first kindled by the 
sight of her loveliness. But, if they are really power- 
ful as poets, they cannot be content with mere outward 
Nature alone, but must pass from it inward to the soul 
of man. Far more commonly, however, poets begin 
directly with man, and the heart of man. It is there 
they find the home of their thoughts, the main region 
of their song. With man, his affections, his fortunes, 
and his destiny, they deal directly, and at first hand. 
Nature, if they touch it at all, is to them only as a back- 

5 



bb THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

ground, against which the doings and the sufferings of 
man, the great human story, are set off. This is seen 
especially in the great dramatists, ancient and modern, 
from whose works were you to withdraw all the allu-* 
sions to Nature, though some of their charm would dis- 
appear, yet the greater part of it would remain. When 
these poets deal directly with human life and individual 
character, it holds in this region, not less but more than 
in their dealing with Nature, that it is the continual 
reference, tacit or expressed, to a higher unseen order 
of things, which lends to all their thoughts about man 
their profoundest interest and truest dignity. 

11 Life ! O Death, O World, Time ! 
O Grave where all things flow, 
'Tis yours to make our lot sublime 
With your great weight of woe." 

Two thoughts there are, which, if once admitted into 
the mind, change our whole view of this life, — the be- 
lief that this world is but the vestibule of an eternal 
state of being ; and the thought of Him in whom man 
lives here, and shall live forever. These, as they are 
the cardinal assumptions of natural religion, so they are 
hardly less, though more unconsciously, the ground-tones 
which underlie all the strains of the world's highest 
poetry. It makes scarcely more difference in the color 
of a man's practical life, whether he really believes these 
things to be true, than it does in the complexion of a 
poet's work. Even those who can in no sense be called 
exclusively religious poe'ts, if they grasp life with a 
strong hand, are constrained to take in the sense of 
something beyond this life. To say this would, a few 
years ago, have sounded a truism. To-day it is neces- 
sary once more to reassert it. For there have arisen 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 67 

among us teachers of great power, who would have us 
believe that, for artistic purposes at least, human life, 
with its hopes and fears, its affections and devotions, is 
a thing complete in itself, — that it can maintain its in- 
terest and its dignity, even if confined within this visible 
horizon, concentrated entirely on this earthly existence. 
In lieu of the old faith, both religious and poetic, which 
reached beyond the confines of earth, a new illuminat- 
ing power has been sought, and is assumed to have been 
found, in duty to our fellow-men, and to them alone. 
Duty is not allowed to have an unearthly origin, to 
strike its root in any celestial soil. A piety without 
God is now, it would seem, to be the sole light vouch- 
safed to poor mortals yearning for light. It is to sup- 
ply to sensitive hearts all " high endeavor, pure mo- 
rality, strong enthusiasm," and whatever consolation may 
be possible for them. In opposition to this teaching it 
is maintained that no poet ever yet has made, or ever 
can make, the most of human life, even poetically, who 
has not regarded it as standing on the threshold of an 
invisible world, as supported by divine foundations. 
This is true not only of such devout singers as Dante, 
Milton, Spenser, and Wordsworth ; it holds hardly less 
of other poets, who may at first sight seem to be more 
absorbed in the merely human side of things. 

As one has lately said, " Shakespeare may or may 
not have been a religious man ; he may or may not 
have been a Catholic or a Protestant. But whatever 
his personal views and feelings may have been, the 
light by which he viewed life was the light of Chris- 
tianity. The shine, the shadow, and the colors of the 
moral world he looked upon were all caused or cast by 
the Christian Sun of Righteousness." There is hardly 



68 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

a great character in his plays, no pitch of passion, no 
depth of pathos, where the thought of the other world 
is not present, to add intensity to what is done or suf- 
fered in this. 

Look at his finest representations of character, men 
or women, and it will at once appear how true this is. 
To take some of the best known passages. When 
Macbeth is on the verge of his dreadful act, the thought 
of the future world intrudes — 

" that but this blow 
Might be the be-all and the end-all here, — 
But here upon this bank and shoal of time, — 
We 'd jump the life to come." 

When Hamlet's thoughts turn towards suicide, what is 

it " gives him pause " but 

" the dread of something after death. 
The undiscovered country," 

where dreams may come to trouble him ? And in the 
same play, how the sense of the upright judgment here- 
after disturbs the guilty king ! — 

"In the corrupted currents of the world 
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice; 
. . . but 't is not so above : 
There is no shuffling, there the action lies 
In his true nature ; and we ourselves compelled, 
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, 
To give in evidence." 

Again, Henry V., on the night before Agincourt, 
when he tries to encourage himself with the thought of 
all the good deeds he has done to make reparation for 
the sins of himself and his house, is yet forced to feel 
that there lies a judgment beyond, whose requirements 
these things cannot meet : — 

" Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, 
Who twice a day their withered hands hold up 



THE SPIRITUAL. SIDE OF POETRY. 69 

Toward heaven, to pardon blood ; and I have built 
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests 
Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do; 
Though all that I can do is nothing worth, 
Since that my penitence comes after all, 
Imploring pardon." 

Even Othello in his deadliest mood has yet some 
Christian forecastings about him. His words to Des- 
demona are — 

" If you bethink yourself of any crime. 
Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace, 
Solicit for it straight. . . . 
I would not kill thy unprepared spirit ; 
Ho ; heaven forfend ! I would not kill thy soul, . 
Think on thy sins." 

And all that dreadful scene is full of reverberations 
from beyond the grave, down to those last words of 
Othello — 

"when we shall meet at compt, 

This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven, 

And fiends will snatch at it." 

All feel the beauty of Shakespeare's heroines, the 
variety, the naturalness, the perfection of his portrait- 
ure of women. They are in some sense the crowning 
grace of his finest dramas. Shakespeare was no stain- 
less knight, as some of his sonnets too surely witness. 
But whatever he may himself for a time have been, he 
never lost his high ideal of what woman is, or may be. 
Differing, as his best female characters differ, from each 
other, and beautiful as they all are, in this they agree, 
that, when they are most deeply moved, their religious 
feeling comes out most naturally and winningly. Every 
one must have observed how in all his most attractive 
heroines, Shakespeare has made prayer to be not a 
mere formal office, but the language which, in their 



70 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

deepest emotion, rises spontaneously to their lips. You 
remember how Imogen, had she been allowed to meet 
her lover for a parting interview, would 

"have charged him 
At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight, 
To encounter me with orisons, for then 
I am in heaven for him." 

And they are not less warm in their devotion than true 
in their theology. Justice and mercy are ever in their 
thoughts, and while they plead for this, they do not for- 
get that. This is seen in the famous speech of Portia, 
in which she discourses so eloquently to the Jew of 
" the quality of mercy," ending thus : — 

" Consider this, 
That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation : we do pray for mercy ; 
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render 
The deeds of mercy." 

With still greater emphasis Isabel, she whom Shake- 
speare calls 

"a thing 
Ensky'd, and sainted, an immortal spirit," 

pleads for her brother : — 

" Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once*; 
And he, that might the vantage best have took, 
Found out the remedy. How would you be, 
If He, which is the top of judgment, should 
But judge you as you are ? 0, think on that; 
And mercy then will breathe within your lips, 
Like man new made." 

Observe that Shakespeare refrains from analyzing, as 
is common nowadays, those female characters whom he 
loves best, and would have us love ; he merely presents 
them, true women, yet idealized — moving, speaking, 
in the most natural and graceful way. As our great 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 71 

modern poet has expressed it, he places each before us 

in herself, 

" A perfect woman, . . . 
And yet a spirit still, and bright 
With something of an angel light." 

His analysis, as has been said, he keeps for inferior 
characters — for Cressida and Cleopatra. But for the 
favorites of his imagination, Portia, Perdita, Imogen, 
Cordelia, he has too tender a reverence to treat them 
so. And the thing to remark here is, that Shakespeare, 
who knew the heart so well, when he would represent 
in his heroines the truest, tenderest, most womanly 
love, cannot express it without stirring the depths of 
their religious nature. It may be said that Shakespeare 
merely represented feelings dramatically ; we must not 
take them for his own personal couvictions. Be it so : 
but it is something if he, who of all men knew human 
nature best, has shown us that those feelings which 
touch on the higher unseen world are the deepest and 
truest in the human bosom, and are uttered then only 
when men or women are most deeply moved. More- 
over, as Gervinus has said, the feelings and sentiments 
which rise most frequently to the lips of his purest 
characters, and are at every turn repeated, may be fairly 
taken to be his own. 

It is not, however, in his best characters only that this 
is seen : to his worst and most abandoned he has given 
very distinctly the sense of " the Deity in their own 
bosom," — the forecast of a future judgment. 

But we need not dwell longer on the sayings of 
Shakespeare's best characters, or even on their always 
implied, if not expressed, faith that the world is mor- 
ally governed. We have but to ask ourselves, Would 



72 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

the characters of Desdemona or Cordelia have the same 
meaning for us, if they were merely images painted on 
a curtain, which concealed nothing behind it, — if the 
sufferings and wrongs they endured did not stand out 
against the light of a really existing and eternal right- 
eousness ? What would our feeliug be about the whole 
spectacle of life with all its enigmas, which Shakespeare 
places before us, if, as we gazed on it, we felt that it was 
wholly limited by time, and had no eternal issues ? 
How would the purity, the patience, the self-forge tful- 
ness he represents affect us, if these qualities were 
merely foam-flakes on the top of the wave — 
" A moment white, then gone forever " ? 

Further : take even the ordinary moral ideas and 
affections, which are essential portions of human life, 
and which govern it, — what would they be, what 
power would they have, if they depended merely on 
this visible framework of things ; if they were not 
allied to a higher world, from which they come, to 
which they tend ? Conscience, for instance, as honest 
hearts feel it, and as Shakespeare described it, what has 
it to do with a merely material system ? Or the emo- 
tion of awe, — what is there in the merely physical 
world which has any power or right to evoke it ? Or 
love, — even human love, when it is high, pure, and in- 
tense, — can it stop within merely temporal bounds ? is 
it not borne instinctively onward to seek for its objects 
a higher, more stable existence, beyond the reach of 
earthly vicissitudes ? 

Again, while it is true that even the most common 
moral ideas and affections, which all men acknowledge, 
would be stunted and dwarfed if cut off from a spiritual 
background, there exists a whole order of moral ideas, 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 73 

which without that background could not exist at all. 
There is a whole range of " delicate and fragile forms of 
virtue " which could not grow in the air of ordinary 
society, yet in which modern poetry has found its finest 
material. The sense of sinfulness, with all that it in- 
volves, whence do men get it, but from the sense of 
One higher and holier than we ? Repentance, with its 
family of gentle graces, compassion for the fallen, sym- 
pathy with the wretched, sweet humility, — what would 
human life, what would modern poetry be, if these 
tender yet unearthly graces were withdrawn from them ? 
Aspiration, which gives wings to man's best feelings and 
bears them heavenward, — where would this be, if the 
human heart were denied all access to an eternal world, 
and Him who is the life of it ? 

These graces, and many more, are plants which have 
their root not in any earthly garden, but in that celes- 
tial soil, under that serene sky, which is warmed by the 
sunshine of the Divine Spirit. Here we touch the 
ground of the profoundest inspiration accessible to man. 
If, as we are told, poetry is " the suggestion of noble 
grounds for the noble emotions," what emotions so 
noble, what grounds so elevated, as those to which de- 
vout souls are admitted in communion with their Maker ? 
This is a subject merely to hint at, not to dwell on here. 
"When a man who has vitally felt these moods adds to 
them the true poetic gift, we then have the best that 
human poetry can do. Then only the soul responds 
from its deepest depths, then only are elicited in their 
fullest compass " the whole mysterious assemblage of 
thoughts and feelings " which the heart has within it, 
and to which one object alone is adequate. Such po- 
etry is reached by Dante, by Milton, and by Words- 



74 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

worth, when at the height of their inspiration, — those 
consecrated spirits among the poets, 

" Haunted forever by the eternal mind." 

And yet, truth to tell, one can imagine — indeed, the 
spirit craves — something that should transcend even 
the highest strains which these have uttered, a poetry in 
which deep and fervid devotion, winged with high im- 
agination, should relieve the soul's yearnings, in a way 
which no human language, save the words of Scripture, 
has yet attained to. 

The philosophies which have been dominant for the 
last thirty years have not been favorable to poetry of 
this kind. The system of thought which confines all 
knowledge to mere appearances, and all belief to things 
which can be verified by physical methods, leaves no 
place for it. Such poetry cannot live, any more than 
religion, on appearances divorced from substance; it 
knows not what to make of phenomena unattached ; it 
imperatively demands that there shall be a substratum 
of reality behind those fleeting images of beauty and of 
goodness which it contemplates. How strangely this 
philosophy works in the region of poetry, how it sets 
head and heart, imagination and conviction, at war, in 
those who are enslaved by it, is notably seen in the 
experience of the late John Stuart Mill, as recorded in 
his autobiography. There came, it will be remembered, 
a crisis in his life, when the fabric of happiness, which 
he had been rearing up for himself and the world, fell 
in ruins about him, and he found himself sunk in hope- 
less dejection. This result he ascribes to the all-anni- 
hilating power of analysis, which alone of his mental 
faculties he had cultivated. He asked himself whether, 
if all the social ends he had hitherto aimed at were 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 75 

achieved, their success would really give him inward 
satisfaction ; and he honestly answered, No ! He then 
fell into a prolonged despondency, from which for a 
time nothing could arouse him. Almost the first tiling 
which came to relieve this mental malady was the 
study of Wordsworth's Poems, especially the Lyrical 
Ballads. In these he seemed to find the medicine that 
he needed. Expressing, as they did, " states of feeling, 
and of thought colored by feeling under the excitement 
of beauty," they seemed to open to him a perennial 
source " of inward joy, and of sympathetic and imagina- 
tive pleasure, which could be shared by all human 
beings." 

But while Mr. Mill accepted and delighted in the im- 
aginative emotions which Wordsworth awakened, true 
to the philosophy which he had imbibed from his fa- 
ther, he would not accept the spiritual beliefs, which 
in Wordsworth supported these emotions. But would 
Wordsworth's poetry have been possible, if, as he 
looked on the spectacle of the natural and moral uni- 
verse, he had not apprehended behind it 

" the ever-during power, 
And central peace subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation " ? 

To be a poet and teacher such as Wordsworth is 
implies not merely the possession of his great poetic 
powers, but a firm hold of that moral material out of 
which such poetry is wrought. 

Sometimes, of late years, when our summers have 
been unusually sunless and cold, we have been told 
that the cause lay in the icebergs, which, detached 
in spring from the polar ice, and floating southward 
into the temperate seas, had chilled our atmosphere. 



76 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

Some such chill has during the last thirty years fallen 

on much of our poetry, from the influence of negative 

philosophies. There have been poets amongst us who, 

if they had not lived under this cold shadow, possessed 

gifts which might have carried them to far greater 

heights than they ever reached. As it is, their poetry, 

whatever its merits may be, has in it no skylark notes, 

no tones of natural gladness ; still less does it attain to 

that serener joy, which they know, who, having looked 

sorrow in the face, and gone through dark experiences, 

have come out on the farther side. These modern poets 

have nothing to tell of the peace which 

"settles where the intellect is meek." 

They know nothing of 

" Melancholy fear subdued by faith, 
Of blessed consolations in distress ; 
Of joy in widest commonalty spread." 

These things they cannot know ; because the roots of 
them lie only in spiritual convictions, from which the 
philosophy they have embraced has wholly estranged 
them. 

The Experience Philosophy, so long in the air, has 
put on many forms and taken many names. Whether 
it call itself Phenomenalism, or Positivism, or Agnos- 
ticism, or Secularism, in all its phases it is alike chilling 
to the soul and to soul-like poetry. No doubt it offers 
to imagination an ideal, but it is an ideal which has no 
root in reality. With such an ideal, imagination, which 
is an organ of the true, not of the false, which is in- 
tended to vivify truth, not to create the fictitious, can 
never be satisfied. Imagination, as has been said, is 
an eagle, whose natural home is the celestial mountains. 
Unless it knows these to be, not cloud shadows, but 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 77 

veritable hills, whither it can repair and renew its 
strength, the faculty pines and dies. If it could not be- 
lieve that the ideal on which it fixes its eyes, with which 
it strives to interpenetrate the actual, is truth in its high- 
est essence, imagination would be paralyzed, poetry ex- 
tinct. 

But we need not fear any such catastrophe. Negative 
philosophies may for a time prevail ; but they cannot 
ultimately suppress the soul, or stifle vivid intuitions 
which flash up from its depth and witness to its celestial 
origin. Those " gentle ardors from above," which in 
better moments visit men, it is the privilege of poetry to 
seize, and to clothe forever in forms of perfect beauty. 

To conclude. There are many ways of looking at 
life, and each way has an ideal, and a poetry appropriate 
to it. 

There is the view which looks on the world as a place 
for physical enjoyment, and its ideal is perfect health, 
bodily vigor, and high animal spirits. And there is a, 
poetry answering to this view, though not a very exalted 
poetry. 

Again, there are views which make intellectual truth, 
or at least perfect aesthetic beauty, their aim ; and under 
the power of these ideals, poetry no doubt rises to a 
much higher level. But as such views leave out the 
deeper part of man, they do not adequately interpret 
life, or permanently satisfy the heart. 

Some there are who, having tried life, and not found 
in it what they expected, have grown disappointed and 
cynical, or even defiant and rebellious. And these moods 
have found poetic utterance in every age, and in every 
variety of tone. But the poets who have lent their gift 
to express these feelings only have not much benefited 
mankind. 



78 THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 

Yet others there are who, having looked below the 
surface, have early learned that, if the world is not 
meant to give absolute enjoymeut, if pain and sorrow 
are indeed integral parts of it, it yet contains within it 
gracious reliefs, remedies, alleviations ; and that for 
many sensitive hearts one of the alleviations is poetry. 
" We live under a remedial system ; " and poetry, right- 
ly used, not only helps to interpret this system, but itself 
combines with the remedial tendencies. 

Again, there are high-toned spirits which regard the 
world as a scene made to give scope for moral heroism. 
Devotion to some object out from self, — to friendship, 
to country, to humanity, — each of these is a field in 
which poetry finds full exercise, and on which it sheds 
back its own consecration. But neither of these last 
views, noble as they are, can by itself withstand the 
shock of circumstance, unless it is secured on a spirit- 
ual anchorage. The poet who has himself laid hold 
of the spiritual world, and the objects that are there, 
is especially fitted to help men to do this. While, in 
virtue of that insight which great poets have, he reads 
to men their own thoughts and aspirations, and " com- 
forts and strengthens them by the very reading," he 
lets down on them a light from above which trans- 
figures them, touches springs of immortality that lie 
buried within, and sets them murmuring ; opens avenues 
for the soul into endless existence. Before men, over- 
borne by things seen, he sets an ideal which is real, — 
an object not for intellect and imagination only, but for 
the affections, the conscience, the spirit, for the whole of 
man. When their hearts droop he bids them 

"look abroad, 
And see to what fair countries they are bound." 



THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. 79 

His voice is a continual reminder that, whether we think 
of it or not, the celestial mountains are before us, and 
thither lies our true destiny. And he is the highest 
poet who keeps this vision most steadily before himself, 
and, by the beauty of his singing, wakens others to a 
sense of it. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE POET A REVEALER. 

Hazlitt has somewhere said that "genius is some 
strong quality in the mind, aiming at and bringing out 
some new and striking quality in nature." The same 
thought seems to have possessed Coleridge, when, in the 
third volume of The Friend, he labors to reconcile 
Bacon's insistence on observation and experiment, as 
the tests of truth, with Plato's equal insistence on the 
truth of ideas, independent of experience. In the 
" prudens quaestio," says Coleridge, which the discoverer 
puts to nature, he is unconsciously feeling after and 
anticipating some hidden law of nature ; and that he 
does so feel after it till he finds it is in virtue of some 
mysterious kinship between the guess Of the discoverer's 
mind and the operations of nature. 

In the physical world, we observe that those guesses 
of genius, which are the parents of discovery, are born 
in gifted minds, here or there, just when some new in- 
vention or discovery is required to carry on the course 
of human affairs. The mariner's compass, whoever may 
have been its discoverer, was introduced into Europe 
the century before Yasco da Gama and Columbus under- 
took their voyages, and, as it would seem, to enable them 
to do so. Newton wrought out his system of Fluxions, 
and published his Principia, with its announcement of 
the law of gravitation, at a time when physical inquiry 
must have remained at a standstill, if these discoveries 



THE POET A REVEALER. 81 

had been withheld. In the last generation James Watt's 
great invention, and, within living memory, Robert 
Stephenson's, appeared just at a time when society was 
ready to assume a new phase, but could not have as- 
sumed it, till these discoveries were perfected. 

But there are other social changes, more impalpable? 
but not less real, more subtle, but piercing deeper, than 
the physical ones. These last, wrought on the world's 
surface, are visible and tangible, and all can appreciate 
them. But the invisible changes wrought in men's 
minds, the revolutions in sentiment which distinguish 
one age from another, are so silent and so subtle, that 
the mere practical man entirely ignores or despises them. 
Mere sentiment, forsooth! Who cares for sentiment? 
But let the practical man know, those sentiments he 
despises are in human affairs more potent than all the 
physical inventions he so much venerates. 

How these changes of feeling arise, from what hidden 
springs they come, who shall say? But that they do 
come forth, and make themselves widely felt, and in the 
end change the whole face of society, none can doubt. 
They come, as changes in the weather come, as the sky 
turns from bright to dark, and from dark to bright, by 
reason of causes which we cannot penetrate, but with 
effects which all must feel. 

"The thoughts they had were the parents of the 
deeds they did ; their feelings were the parents of their 
thoughts." So it always has been, and shall be. In the 
movements of man's being, the first and deepest thing 
is the sentiment which possesses him, the emotional and 
moral atmosphere which he breathes. The causes which 
ultimately determine what this atmosphere shall be are 
too hidden, too manifold and complex, for us to grasp ; 



82 THE POET A REVEALER. 

but, among the human agents which produce them, 
none are more powerful than great poets. Poets are 
the rulers of men's spirits more than the philosophers, 
whether mental or physical. For the reasoned thought 
of the philosopher appeals only to the intellect, and 
does not flood the spirit ; the great poet touches a deeper 
part of us than the mere philosopher ever reaches, for 
he is a philosopher and something more, — a master of 
thought; but it is inspired thought, thought filled and 
made alive with emotion. He makes his appeal, not to 
intellect alone, but to all that part of man's being in 
which lie the springs of life. 

If it be true that 

" We live by admiration, hope, and love," — 
that "the objects which we admire, love, hope for, deter- 
mine our character, make us what we are, — then it is 
the poet, more than any other, who holds the key of our 
inmost being. For it is he who, by virtue of inspired 
insight, places before us, in the truest, most attractive 
light, the highest things we can admire, hope for, love. 
And this he does mainly by unveiling some new truth 
to men, or, which is the same thing, by so quickening 
and vivifying old and neglected truths, that he makes 
them live anew. To do this last needs as much pro- 
phetic insight as to see new truths for the first time. 

This is the poet's highest office — either to be are- 
vealer of new truth, or an unveiler of truths forgotten 
or hidden from common eyes. There is another func- 
tion which poets fulfil, — that of setting forth in appro- 
priate form the beauty which all see, and giving to 
thoughts and sentiments in which all share beautiful and 
attractive expression. This last is the poet's artistic 
function, and that which some would assign to him as 
his only one. 



THE POET A REVEALER. 83 

These two aspects of the poet, the prophetic and the 
artistic, coexist in different proportions in all great poets ; 
in one the prophetic insight predominates, in another 
the artistic utterance. In the case of any single poet, it 
may be an interesting question to determine in what 
proportions he possesses each of these two qualities. 
But, without attempting this, it will be enough to show 
by examples of some of the greatest poets, ancient and 
modern, that to each has been granted some domain, 
of which he is the supreme master; that to each has 
been vouchsafed a special insight into some aspect of 
truth, a knowledge and a love of some side of life or of 
nature, not equally revealed to any other ; that he has 
taken this home to his heart, and made it his own 
peculiar possession, and then uttered it to the world, in 
a more vivid and a more attractive way than had ever 
been done before. 

To begin with Homer. It was no merely artistic 
power, but a true and deep insight into human nature, 
which enabled him to be the first of his race, as far as 
we know, who saw clearly, and drew with firm hand, 
those great types of heroic character which have lived 
ever since in the world's imagination. Achilles, Ulysses, 
Nestor, Ajax, Hector, Andromache, Priam — these, 
while they are ideal portraits, are at the same time per- 
manent, outstanding forms of what human nature is. 
The Homeric vision of Olympus and its immortals, 
splendid though it be, was still but transient. It had 
no root in the deepest seats of human nature. For 
even in his own land a time came when, in the interest 
of purer morality, Plato wished to dethrone Homer's 
gods. But his delineation of heroes and heroines re- 
mains true to human feeling as it exists to-day. Even 



84 THE POET A REVEALER. 

Shakespeare, when, in his Troilus and Gressida, he 
took up those world-old characters, and touched them 
anew, was constrained to preserve the main outlines as 
Homer had left them. It is this permanent truthful- 
ness and consistency in the human characters of the 
Iliad which makes one believe, in spite of all the crit- 
ics, that one master hand was at the centre of the work, 
drawing those consistent portraits, real yet ideal, which 
no agglomeration of bards could ever have achieved. 

Again, .zEschylus and Sophocles were, each in his 
day, revealers of new and deeper truth to their genera- 
tion. The Greek world, as it became self-conscious and 
reflective, had, no doubt, grown much in moral light 
since the time of Homer, and that light, which their 
age inherited, these two poets gathered up, and uttered 
in the best form. But, besides this, they added to it 
something of their own. In the religion of their poems, 
though the mythologic and polytheistic conceptions of 
their country are still present, you can perceive the 
poet's own inner thought disengaging itself from these 
entanglements, and rising to the purer and higher idea 
of the Unity of Zeus, the one all-powerful and all-wise 
Ruler of heaven and earth ; till in Sophocles he stands 
forth as the " centre and source " of all truth and right- 
eousness. 

Then, as to the life of man, we see in iEschylus and 
in Sophocles the Greek mind for the first time at work 
upon those great moral problems, which at an earlier 
date had engaged the Hebrew mind m the Book of Job. 
The mystery of suffering, especially the suffering of 
the guiltless, is ever present to them. Popular belief 
held that such innocent suffering was the mere decree 
of a dark and unmoral destiny. JEschylus was not 



THE POET A REVEALER. 85 

content with this, but taught that, when the innocent 
man or woman suffers, it is because there has been 
wrong-doing somewhere. He sought to give a moral 
meaning to the suffering, by tracing it back to sin, if 
not in the sufferer himself, at least in some one of his 
ancestors. The father has sinned, the son must suffer. 
"Y/3pis there has been in some progenitor, a.rt] and ruin 
fall on his descendants. 

Sophocles looks on the same spectacle of innocent 
suffering, but carries his interpretation of it a step 
farther, and makes it more moral. Prosperity, he shows, 
is not always real gain to the individual, but often 
proves itself an evil by the effects it produces on his 
character. Neither is adversity entirely an evil, for 
sometimes, though not always, it acts as a refining fire, 
purifying and elevating the nature of the sufferer. Its 
effects, at least in noble natures, are self-control, pru- 
dence, contentment, peace of soul. Philoctetes, after 
being ennobled by the things he had suffered, has his 
reward even here, in being made the means of destroy- 
ing Troy, and then returning home, healed and triumph- 
ant. CEdipus, in his calm and holy death within the 
shrine of the Eumenides, and in the honor reserved for 
his memory, finds a recompense for his monstrous suf- 
ferings and his noble endurance. Antigone, though she 
has no earthly reward for her self-sacrifice, yet passes 
hence with sure hope — the hope that in the life beyond 
she will find love waiting her, with all the loved ones 
gone before. 

These few remarks may recall, to some who read 
them, suggestive thoughts which fell from Professor 
Jebb in his two concluding lectures on Sophocles, given 
last summer in the hall of New College, Oxford. And 



86 THE POET A REVEALER. 

all who desire to follow out this subject I gladly refer 
to the admirable essay on The Theology and Ethics 
of Sophocles, which Mr. Abbott, of Balliol, has recently 
contributed to the book entitled Hellenica. 

We should not naturally turn to Roman literature to 
find the prophetic element. Speculation and imag- 
inative dreaming, whence new thoughts are born, were 
alien to the genius of that practical race. But there is 
at least one of Rome's poets who is filled with some- 
thing like true prophetic fire. On the mind of Lucretius 
there had dawned two truths, one learned from his own 
experience, the other from Greek philosophy ; and both 
of these inspired him with a deep fervor, quite unlike 
anything else to be met with in his country's litera- 
ture. One was the misery and hopelessness of human 
life around him, as it still clung to the decaying phan- 
toms of an outworn mythology, and groped its way 
through darkness with no better guides than these. 
The other, gained from the teaching of Democritus 
and Epicurus, was the vision of the fixed order of 
the Universe, the infinite sweep and the steadfastness 
of its laws. As he contemplated the stately march of 
these vast, all-embracing uniformities, he felt as though 
he were a man inspired to utter to the world a new 
revelation. And the words in which he does utter it 
often rise to the earnestness and the glow of a prophet. 
He was, as far as I know, the earliest and most earnest 
expounder, in ancient times, of that truth, which has 
taken so firm hold of the modern mind. In the full 
recognition by men of the new truth which he preached, 
he seemed to himself to see the sole remedy for all the 
ills which make up human misery. 

Again, Virgil, though with him the love of beauty, as 



THE POET A REVEALER. 87 

• 
all know, and the artistic power of rendering it, are 

paramount, yet laid hold of some new truths, which none 
before him had felt so deeply. No one had till then 
conceived so grandly of the growth of Rome's greatness, 
and the high mission with which heaven had entrusted 
her. And who else of the ancient poets has felt so 
deeply, and expressed so tenderly, the pathos of human 
life, or so gathered up and uttered the most humane 
sentiment, towards which the world's whole history had 
been tending — sentiment which was the best flower 
of the travail of the old world, and which Christianity 
took up and carried on into the new ? In. these two 
directions Virgil made his own contribution to human 
progress. 

If any poet deserves the name of prophet, it is he 
whose voice ' was heard the earliest in the dawn of 
modern poetry. In the Divine Comedy Dante gave 
voice to all the thoughts and speculations, as well as to 
the action of the stirring thirteenth century. I suppose 
that no age has ever been summed up so fully and so 
melodiously, by any singer. On Dante's work, I can- 
not do better than quote the words in which one of the 
most accomplished of its interpreters has expressed his 
feeling regarding it. Dean Church, in his well-known 
Essay on Dante, has said : — 

" Those who have studied that wonderful poem know its 
austere yet subduing beauty ; they know what force there is 
in its free and earnest yet solemn verse, to strengthen, to 
tranquillize, to console. It is a small thing that it has the 
secret of nature and man ; that a few keen words have 
opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky ; 
have taught them new mysteries of sound ; have made them 
recognize, in distinct image and thought, fugitive feelings, or 



88 THE POET A REVEALER. 

their unheeded expression by look, or gesture, or motion ; 
that it has enriched the public and collective memory of 
society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feel- 
ings and fortune ; has charmed ear and mind by the music 
of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its 
plan. But, besides this, they know how often its seriousness 
has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faint- 
heartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and 
sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness 
overcome sullenness and assauged distress, its strong faith 
quelled despair and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp im- 
parted harmony to the view of clashing truths." 

To review the great poets of our own country, and 
consider what new elements of thought and sentiment 
each in his turn imported into the minds of his country- 
men, would be an interesting study, but one not to be 
overtaken in a single essay, if it could be in many. I 
shall therefore pass at once to that great outburst of 
song which ushered in the dawn of the present century 
in England ; and shall try to show, more in detail, some 
of the original and creative impulses which the poets 
of that time let loose upon society. This I shall do by 
taking the examples of two poets of that generation. 
Other poets, their contemporaries, were not without 
their share of the prophetic gift ; but the two I shall 
name have exerted an influence, the one wider, the 
other more deep, and both more distinctly healthful, 
than any of their brethren. 

It was nothing short of a new revelation, when Scott 
turned back men's eyes on their own past history and 
national life, and showed them there a field of human 
interest and a poetic creation which long had lain neg- 
lected. Since the days of Shakespeare a veil had been 
upon it, and Scott removed the veil. Quinet has spoken 



THE POET A REVEALER. 89 

of the impassable gulf which the age of Louis Quatorze 
has placed between mediaeval Frauce and the modern 
time. It has parted the literature of France, he says, 
iuto two distinct periods, between which no communion 
is possible. Bossuet, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Vol- 
taire, owe nothing to the earlier thought of France, 
draw nothing from it. Because of this separation, 
Quinet thinks that all modern French literature, both 
prose and poetry, is more real and more fitted to inter- 
pret the modern spirit, than if it had grown continuously. 
We may well doubt this ; we may ask whether it has 
not been the death of French poetry — the cause why 
modern France possesses so little that to us looks like 
poetry at all. It w r ould seem as if at one time a like 
calamity had threatened English literature. In the 
earlier part of last century, under the influence of Pope 
and Bolingbroke, a false cosmopolitanism seemed creep- 
ing over it, which might have done for our literature 
what the French wits of the Louise Quartorze age did 
for theirs. But from this we were saved by that con- 
tinuity of feeling and of purpose which happily governs 
our literary not less than our political life. All through 
last century the ancient spirit was never wholly dead 
in England, and it would have revived in some way or 
other. That immense sentiment, that turning back of 
affection upon the past, was coming — no doubt it would 
have come — even if Scott had never been born. But 
he was the chosen vessel to gather up and concentrate 
within himself the whole force of this retrospective 
tendency, and to pour it in full flood upon the heart of 
European society. More profoundly than any other 
man or poet, he felt the significance of the past, brooded 
over it, was haunted by it, and in his poems and ro- 



90 THE POET A REVEALER. 

mances expressed it so broadly, so felicitously, with such 
genial human interest, that even in his own lifetime he 
won the world to feel as he did. 

One among many results of Scott's work was to turn 
the tide against the Illumination, of which Voltaire, 
Diderot, and the host of Encyclopaedists were the high 
priests. Another result was, that he changed men's 
whole view of history, and of the way in which it should 
be written ; recalled it from pale abstractions to living 
personalities, and peopled the past no longer with mere 
phantoms, or doctrinaire notions, but with men and 
women, in whom the life-blood is warm. If you wish 
y to estimate the change he wrought in this way, compare 
the historic characters of Hume and Robertson with the 
life-like portraits of Carlyle and Macaulay. Though 
these two last have said nasty things of Scott, it little 
became them to do so ; for from him they learnt much 
of that art which gives to their descriptions of men and 
scenes and events so peculiar a charm. If we now look 
back on many characters of past ages, with an intimate 
acquaintance and a personal affection unknown to our 
grandfathers, it was Scott who taught us this. 

These may be said to be intellectual results of Scott's 
ascendancy ; but there are also great social changes 
wrought by his influence, which are patent to every eye. 
Look at modern architecture. The whole mediaeval 
revival, whether we admire it or not, must be credited 
to Scott. Likely enough Scott was not deeply versed 
in the secrets of Gothic architecture and its inner pro- 
prieties — as, I believe, his own attempts at Abbots- 
ford, as well as his descriptions of castles and churches, 
prove. But it was he who turned men's eyes and 
thoughts that way, and touched those inner springs of 



THE POET A REVEALER. 91 

interest from which, in due time, the whole movement 
came. 

Another social result is, that he not only changed 
the whole sentiment with which Scotchmen regard their 
country, but he awakened in other nations an interest 
in it which was till his time unknown. When Scott 
was born, Scotland had not yet recovered from the 
long decadence and despondency into which she had 
fallen, after she had lost her Kings and her Parliament. 
Throughout last century a sense of something like deg- 
radation lay on the hearts of those who, still loving 
their country, could not be content with the cold cosmo- 
politanism affected by the Edinburgh wits. Burns felt 
this deeply, as his poems show, and he did something in 
his way to redress it. But still the prevailing feeling 
entertained by Englishmen towards Scots and Scotland 
was that which is so well represented in The Fortunes 
of Nigel. Till the end of the last century, the attitude 
of Dr. Johnson was shared by most of his countrymen. 
If all this has entirely changed, — ■ if Scots are now 
proud of their country, instead of being ashamed of it, 

— if other nations look on the land with feelings of 
romance, and on the people themselves with respect, if 
not with interest, this we owe to Scott, more than to 
any other human agency. And not the past only, with 
its heroic figures, but the lowly peasant life of his own 
time, he first revealed to the world in its worth and 
beauty. Jeanie Deans, Edie Ochiltree, Caleb Balder- 
stone, Dandie Dinmont, — these and many more are 
characters which his eye first discerned in their quiet 
obscurity, — read the inner movements of their hearts, 

— and gave to the world, a possession for all time. And 
this he did by his own wonderful human-heartedness, — 



92 THE POET A REVEALER. 

so broad, so clear, so genial, so humorous. More than 
any man since Shakespeare, he had in him that touch 
of nature which makes the whole world kin, and he so 
imparted it to his own creations that they won men's 
sympathies to himself, not less than to his country and 
his people. Wordsworth has well called Scott " the 
whole world's darling." If strangers and foreigners 
now look upon Scotland and its people with other eyes 
and another heart, it is because they see them through 
the personality of Scott, and through the creations with 
which he peopled the land ; not through the prosaic 
Radicalism, which since Scott's day has been busily 
effacing from the character of his countrymen so much 
that he loved. 

I have spoken of how Scott has been a power of so- 
cial and beneficent influence by the flood of fresh senti- 
ment which he let in on men's minds. But I am aware 
that to your " practical " man romance is moonshine, 
and sentiment a delusion. Such an one may, perhaps, 
be led to esteem them more highly, when he is made 
aware how much sentiment and romance are worth in 
the market. The tourists, who from all lands crowd to 
Scotland every summer, and enrich the natives even in 
remotest districts, — what was it brought them thither ? 
What but the spell of Walter Scott ? And, as the late 
Sir William Stirling Maxwell well expressed it at the 
Scott Centenary, the fact that Scott has in any of his 
creations named a farm, or a hill, or a stream, that is to 
their possessor as good as a new title-deed, which will 
probably double the marketable value of the spot. So 
practical a power may poetry become in the affairs of 
this working world. 

I have been speaking of the power poetry has, by 



THE POET A REVEALER. 93 

bringing in on men's minds new tides of feeling, to 
effect great and visible social chancres. 

I shall now turn to another poet, a contemporary 
and a friend of Scott's, whose influence has affected a 
much narrower area, but who within that area has prob- 
ably worked more deeply. Wordsworth is nothing, if 
he is not a revealer of new truth. That this was the 
view he himself took of his office may be gathered from 
many words of his own. In The Prelude he speaks 

of — 

" the animating faith, 
That poets, even as prophets, . . . 
Have each his own peculiar faculty, 
Heaven's gift, a sense that fits them to perceive 
Objects unseen before." 

And then he goes on to express his conviction that to 

him also had been vouchsafed 

<{ An insight that in some sense he possesses 
A privilege, whereby a work of his, 
Proceeding from a source of untaught things, 
Creative and enduring, may become 
A power like one of Nature's." 

If Wordsworth was a revealer, what did he reveal ? 

The subjects of his own poetry, he tells us, are Man, 
and Nature, and Human Life. What did he teach? 
What new light did he shed on each of these ? He was 
gifted with soul and eye for nature, which enabled him 
in her presence to feel a vivid and sensitive delight, 
which it has been given to few men to feel. The out- 
ward world lay before him with the dew still fresh upon 
it, the splendor of morning still undulled by custom or 
routine. The earliest poets of every nation, Homer 
and Chaucer, had, no doubt, delighted in rural sights 
and sounds, in their own simple, unconscious way. It 
was Wordsworth's special merit that, coming late in 



94 THE POET A REVEALER. 

time, when the thick veil of custom and centuries of 
artificial civilization had coine between us and this 
natural delight, and made the familiar things of earth 
seem trivial and commonplace, he saw nature anew, 
with a freshness as of the morning, with a sensibility of 
soul that was like a new inspiration ; and not only saw, 
but so expressed it, as to remove the scales from the 
eyes of others, and make them see something of the 
fresh beauty which nature wore for himself, — feel some 
occasional touch of that rapture in her presence, with 
which he himself was visited. This power especially 
resides in his Lyrical Ballads, composed between 1798 
and 1808. Such heaps of comment have recently been 
written about Wordsworth's way of dealing with nat- 
ure — and I have made my own contribution to that 
heap — that I should be ashamed to increase it now ; 
the more, because in this, as in other good things, our 
attempts to analyze the gift spoil our enjoyment of it. 
T'vo remarks only I shall make, and pass on. First, 
he did not attempt to describe rural objects, as they are 
in themselves, but rather as they affect human hearts. 
As it has been well expressed, he stood at the meeting- 
point where inflowing nature and the soul of man touch 
each other, showed how they fit in each to each, and 
what exquisite joy comes from the contact. Secondly, 
he did not hold with Coleridge that from nature we 
" receive but what we give," but rather that we receive 
much which we do not give. He held that nature is a 
" living presence," which exerts on us active powers of 
her own, — a bodily image through which the Sovereign 
Mind holds intercourse with man. 

When face to face with nature, Wordsworth would 
sometimes seem too much of an optimist. At such 
times it was that he exclaimed — 



THE POET A REVEALER. 95 

" naught 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings." 

Nature had done so much to restore himself from deep 
mental dejection, that he sometimes spoke as if she 
were able to do the same for all men. But, when he 
so spoke, he forgot how many people there are, whom, 
either from inward disposition, or from outward circum- 
stances, nature never reaches. 

But in the poems which deal with human life and 
character there is no trace of this optimistic tendency. 
It has been recently said that " no poet of any day lias 
sunk a sounding-line deeper than Wordsworth into the 
fathomless secret of suffering that is in no sense retribu- 
tive." His mind seemed fascinated by the thought of 
the sorrow that is in this world, and brooded over it as 
something infinite, unfathomable. 

His deepest convictions on this are expressed in these 
lines — 

"Action is transitory — a step, a blow, 
The motion of a muscle — this way or that — 
'T is done; and in the after vacancy of thought 
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed: 
Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark, 
And hath the nature of infinity. 
Yet through that darkness (infinite though it seems 
And unremovable), gracious openings lie, 
By which the soul — with patient steps of thought, 
Now toiling, wafted now on wings of prayer — 
May pass in hope, and though from mortal bonds 
Yet undelivered, rise with sure ascent 
Even to the fountain-head of peace divine." 

This is the keynote of his deepest human poetry. In 
theory and practice alike he held that it is not in ex- 
citing adventure, romantic incident, strange and unusual 



96 THE POET A REVEALER. 

mental experience, that the depth of human nature is 
most seen, or its dignity. Along the common high road 
of life, in the elemental feelings of men and women, in 
the primary affections, in the ordinary joys and sorrows, 
there lay for him the truest, most permanent sources of 
interest. His eye saw beneath the outward surface that 
which common eyes do not see, but which he was em- 
powered to make them see. The secret pathos, the 
real dignity, which lie hid, often under the most un- 
promising exteriors, he has brought out, in many of 
those narrative poems, in which he has described men 
and women, and expressed his views about life in the 
concrete more vividly than in his poems that are purely 
reflective and philosophical. Take, for instance, Ruth. 
The Female Vagrant, The Affliction of Margaret, the 
Story of Margaret in The Excursion, the Story of 
Ellen in The Churchyard among the Mountains, The 
Brothers, Michael, — above all, The White Doe of 
Rylstone. It is noticeable how predominating in these 
is the note of suffering, not of action ; and in most of 
them, how it is women, rather than men, who are the 
sufferers. This, perhaps, is because endurance seems 
to be, in a peculiar way, the lot of women, and patience 
has among them its most perfect work. Human affec- 
tion sorely tried, love that has lost its earthly object, 
yet lives on, with nothing to support it, 

" solitary anguish, 
Sorrow that is not sorrow, but delight 
To think of, for the glory that redounds 
Therefrom to human kind, and what we are," — 

these are the themes over which his spirit broods, spell- 
bound as by a strange fascination. This might be well 
illustrated, could I have dwelt in detail on the story of 



THE POET A REVEALER. 97 

u Margaret " in the first book of The Excursion. Those 
who are interested in the subject should study that 
affecting tale, as it is one in which is specially seen 
Wordsworth's characteristic way of meditating upon, 
while sympathizing with, human suffering. 

The reflection which closes the narrative is peculiarly 
"Wordsworthian. The "Wanderer," seeing the poet 
deeply moved by the tale, says — 

" My friend ! enough to sorrow you have given, 
The purposes of wisdom ask no more ; 
Be wise and cheerful ; and no longer read 
The forms of things with an unworthy eye. 
She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here. 
I well remember, that those very plumes, 
Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on the wall, 
By mist and silent rain-drops silvered o'er, 
As once I passed, did to my heart convey 
So still an image of tranquillity, 
So calm and still, and looked so beautiful, 
Amid the uneasy thoughts that filled my mind, 
That what we feel of sorrow and despair 
From ruin and from change, and all the grief, 
The passing shows of being leave behind, 
Appeared an idle dream, that could not live 
Where meditation was. I turned away 
And walked along my road in happiness." 

No poet but Wordsworth would have concluded such 
a tale with such words. In this " meditative rapture," 
which could so absorb into itself the most desolating 
sorrow, there is, it must be owned, something too aus- 
tere, too isolated, too remote from ordinary human sym- 
pathy. Few minds are equal to such philosophic hardi- 
hood. Even Wordsworth himself, as he grew older 
and had experienced sorrows of his own, came down 
from his solitary height, and changed the passage into a 
humbler tone of Christian sentiment. 

This one story may be taken as a sample of Words- 
7 



98 THE POET A REVEALEK. 

worth's general attitude towards life, and of the estimate 
he formed of things. The trappings, the appendages, 
the outward circumstances of men were nothing to him ; 
the inner heart of the man was everything. What was 
a man's ancestry, what his social position, what were 
even his intellectual attainments, — to these things he 
was almost as indifferent as the writers of the Holy 
Scriptures are. There was quite a biblical severity and 
inwardness about his estimate of human affairs. It 
was the personality, the man within the man, the per- 
manent affections, the will, the purpose of the life, on 
which alone his eye rested. He looked solely on men 
as they are men within themselves. He cared too, I 
gather, but little for that culture, literary, aesthetic, and 
scientific, of which so much is made nowadays, as though 
the possession, or the want of it, made all possible dif- 
ference between man and man. This kind of culture 
he lightly esteemed, for he had found something wor- 
thier than all class culture, often among the lowliest and 
most despised. He tells us that he was — 

" Convinced at heart, 
How little those formalities, to which, 
With overweening trust, alone we give 
The name of education, have to do 
With real feeling and just sense ; how vain 
A correspondence with the talking world 
Proves to the most." 

It has sometimes been said that Wordsworth's estimate 
of men was essentially democratic. Inasmuch as it 
looked only at intrinsic worthiness, and made nothing 
of distinctions of rank, or of polished manners, or even 
of intellectual or aesthetic culture, it may be said to have 
been democratic. Inasmuch, however, as he valued only 
that which is intrinsically and essentially the best in 



THE POET A REVEALER. 99 

men, he may be said to have upheld a moral and spirit- 
ual aristocracy ; but it is an aristocracy which knows no 
exclusiveness, and freely welcomes all who will to enter 
it. No one, indeed, could be farther from flattering the 
average man by preaching to him equality, and telling 
him that he is as good as any other man. Rather he 
taught him that there are moral heights far above him, 
to which some have attained, to which he too may at- 
tain ; but that only by thinking lowlily of himself, and 
highly of those better than himself, only by reverence 
and by upward looking, may he rise higher. 

One thing is noticeable. The ideas and sentiments 
which fill Wordsworth's mind, and color all his delinea- 
tions of men and of nature, are not those which pass 
current in society. You feel intuitively that they would 
sound strange, and out of place, there. They are too 
unworldly to breathe in that atmosphere. Hence you 
will never find the mere man of the world, who takes 
his tone from society, really care for Wordsworth's po- 
etry. The aspect of things he has to reveal does not 
interest such men. 

Others, however, there are who are far from being 
worldly-minded, whom nevertheless Wordsworth's poetry 
fails to reach ; and this not from their fault, but from 
his limitations. His sympathies were deep, rather than 
keen, or broad. There is a large part of human life 
which lies outside of his interest. He was, as all 
know, entirely destitute of humor, — a great want, but 
one which he shared with Milton. This want, often seen 
in very earnest natures, shut him out from much of the 
play and movement that make up life. His plain and 
severe imagination wanted nimbleness and versatility. 
Again, he was not at home in the stormy regions of the 



LofC. 



100 THE POET A REVEALER. 

soul ; he stands aloof alike from the Titanic passions, 
and from the more thrilling and palpitating emotions. 
If he contemplates these at all, whether in others, or as 
felt by himself, it is from a distance, viewing the stormy 
spectacle from a place of meditative calm. This agrees 
with his saying that poetry arises from emotion remem- 
bered in tranquillity. If his heart was hot within him, 
it was not then that he spake, but when it had had time 
to grow cool by after reflection. To many sensitive and 
imaginative natures this attitude is provoking and re- 
pellent. Those things about Lucy, I have heard asked, 
are these*all he had to give to the tenderest affection he 
ever knew ? And many turn from them impatiently 
away to such poems as Byron's on Thyrza, or to his — 

' ' When we two parted 
In silence in tears, 
Half broken-hearted, 
To sever for years," 

or to the passion of Shakespeare, or to the proud pathos 
of Mrs. Barrett Browning's sonnets, — tingling through 
every syllable with emotion. Compared with these, 
Wordsworth's most feeling poems seem to them cold 
and impassive, not to say soporific. But this is hardly 
the true account of them. Byron and such poets as he, 
when they express emotion, are wholly absorbed in it, 
lose themselves entirely in the feeling of the moment. 
For the time, it is the whole world to them. Words- 
worth, and such as he, however deeply they sympathize 
with any suffering, never wholly lose themselves in it, 
never forget that the quick and throbbing emotions are 
but " moments in the being of the eternal silence." They 
make you feel that you are, after all, encompassed by an 
everlasting calm. The passionate kind of lyric is sure 



THE POET A REVEALER. 101 

to be the most universally popular. The meditative 
lyric appeals to a profounder reflectiveness, which is 
feelingly alive to the full pathos of life, and to all the 
mystery of sorrow. Which of them is the higher style 
of poetry I shall not seek to determine. In one mood 
of mind we relish the one ; in another mood we turn to 
the other. Let us keep our hearts open to both. 

In a word, Wordsworth is the prophet of the spiritual 
aspects of the eternal world ; the prophet, too, of the 
moral depths of the soul. The intrinsic and permanent 
affections he contemplated till he saw 
"joy that springs 
Out of human sufferings," 

a light beyond the deepest darkness. In the clearness 
and the steadfastness with which he was able to con- 
template these things, there is something almost super- 
human. 

It is a large subject on which we have been dwelling, 
and yet I seem to have only touched the surface of it. 
Fully to illustrate what contributions of new thought 
and sentiment Scott and Wordsworth made to their age 
would require at least a separate treatise for each. And, 
besides these, there were poets among their contempo- 
raries, who had something of the prophetic light in them, 
though it was a more lurid light ; preeminently the two 
poets of revolt, Byron and Shelley. It was with some- 
thing of quite true prophetic fervor that each of these, 
in his own way, tore off the mask from the social com- 
promises and hollownesses, and denounced the hypocri- 
sies which they believed they saw around them. Neither 
of them, perhaps, had much positive truth with which to 
replace the things they would destroy. Byron did not 
pretend to have. Yet in the far and fierce delight of 



102 THE POET A REVEALER. 

his sympathy with the tempests and the austere grand- 
eurs of nature, and in the strength with which he por- 
trayed the turbid and Titanic movements of the soul, 
there was an element of power hitherto unknown in 
English poetry. 

Shelley, again, had a gift of his own altogether unique. 
He caught and fixed forever movements and hues, both 
in nature and in the mind of man, which were too sub- 
tle, too delicate, too evanescent for any eye but his. He 
may be said to be the prophet of many shades of emo- 
tion, which before him had no language ; the poet, as he 
has been called, of unsatisfied desire, of insatiable long- 
ing. A remedy for all human ills he fancied that he 
had found in that universal love which he preached so 
unweariedly. But one may doubt if the love that he 
dreamt of was substantial, or moral, or self-sacrificing 
enough to bring any healing. 

I refrain from discussing poets who are still living. 
Else one might have tried to show how the Laureate in 
some of his works, specially in In Memoriam, if he has 
not exactly imported new truths into his age, has yet so 
well expressed much of the highest thought that was 
dawning on men's consciousness, that he has become, in 
some sort, the first unveiler of it : also, how great in- 
roads he has made into the domain of science, bringing 
thence truths hitherto unsung, and wedding them to his 
own exquisite music. 

One might have shown, too, how Mr. Browning, dis- 
daining the great highway of the universal emotions, has 
from the most hidden nooks of consciousness fetched 
novel situations and hard problems of thought, and in 
uis own peculiar style uttered — 

" Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." 



THE POET A REVEALER. 103 

In the younger poets of the day, as far as I know 
them, I have not yet perceived the same original pro- 
phetic power which has distinguished many of " the 
dead kings of melody." If it exists, and I have failed 
to discern it, no one will welcome it more gladly than 
I. But what seems to me most characteristic in the 
poetry of the time is, elaborately ornate diction and 
luscious music, expended on themes not weighty in 
themselves. Prophet souls, burning with great and new 
truth, can afford to be severe, plain, even bare in dic- 
tion. Charged with the utterance of large and massive 
thoughts, they can seldom give their strength to studied 
ornamentation. We wait for the day of more substance 
in our poetry. Shall we have to wait, till the plough- 
share of revolution has been again driven through the 
field of European society, and has brought to the sur- 
face some subsoil of original and substantive truth, 
which lies as yet undiscovered ? 



CHAPTER V. 

POETIC STYLE IN MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 

" Manner," said Sir James Mackintosh, " is the con- 
stant transpiration of character." What manner is to 
character and conduct, style is to thought and sentiment, 
when these are expressed in literature. We all know 
what is meant by saying that a man has a good manner ; 
and we know too, in some measure, how he has come 
by it. It implies first that there exist in his nature 
qualities which are admirable, dispositions which are 
lovable, and next, that to these has been superadded 
courtesy, or the gift of expressing naturally and felici- 
tously the feelings that are within him. Where these 
dispositions exist, what is needed is that a man during 
his pliable youth should have lived in good society. 
And by good society we mean not what the world often 
calls such, but society where character is true and gen- 
uine, where the moral tone is high, and the manners 
are refined. It is of course- possible, and we sometimes 
see, that a man may have good outward manners, which 
yet cover a soul inwardly unbeautiful. He may have 
adopted the external economy of manners which rightly 
belongs to genuine worth, and he may wear these as a 
veneer over what is really a coarse and ignoble nature. 
And if the polish has been skilfully put on, it requires 
a practised eye to detect the deception ; but in time it 
is detected. 

All this may be transferred from character and social 



STYLE IN MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 105 

life to literature and its works. A man reveals himself 
— what he really is — in many ways ; by his counte- 
nance, by his voice, by his gait, and not least by the style 
in which he writes. This last, though a more conscious 
and deliberate, is as genuine an expression of himself 
as anything else that he does. 

All literature necessarily implies style, for style is the 
reflection of the writer's personality, and literature is 
before all things personal. In this indeed lies the dis- 
tinction between literature and science, as Dr. Newman 
has pointed out. " Science," he says, " has to do with 
things, literature with thoughts ; science is universal, 
literature is personal ; science uses words merely as 
symbols, and by employing symbols can often dispense 
with words ; but literature uses language in its full com- 
pass, as including phraseology, idiom, style, composition, 
rhythm, eloquence, and whatever other qualities are in- 
cluded in it." In all literature which is genuine, the 
substance or matter is not one thing, and the style an- 
other ; they are inseparable. The style is not some- 
thing superadded from without, as we may make a 
wooden house, and then paint it ; but it is breathed 
from within, and is instinct with the personality of the 
writer. Genuine literature expresses not abstract con- 
ceptions, pure and colorless, but thoughts and things, as 
these are seen by some individual mind, colored with all 
the views, associations, memories, and emotions which 
belong to that mind. 

When it is said that one of the chief merits of a style 
is to be natural, some are apt to fancy that this means 
that it should be wholly effortless and unconscious. 
But a little thought will show that this cannot be. 
Composition by its very nature implies set purpose, eu- 



106 POETIC STYLE IN 

deavor, some measure of painstaking. A few sentences, 
a few verses, may be struck off in the first heat of im- 
pulse. But no continuous essay, no long poem of any 
merit, can be composed by mere improvisation, or with- 
out effort more or less sustained. There are indeed 
thoughts so simple, that they can be communicated in 
a style differing little from good conversation, in a few 
short, transparent sentences. There are other subjects 
so deep and complex, ideas so novel and abstruse, that 
the most finished writer cannot express them without 
much labor, without often retouching his phrases, often 
recasting his whole mode of expression, ere he can place, 
in a lucid and adequate way, before the mind of his 
readers the vision that fills his own. And the result of 
such elaboration may at last bear the charm of natural- 
ness as much as the easiest, most spontaneous utterance. 
To use effort, and yet to preserve truth and naturalness, 
is the main difficulty in all composition. To be able to 
be natural, yet artistic, it is this which distinguishes true 
literary genius. 

What has just been said is true of all literature, prose 
as well as poetry. But it applies preeminently to 
poetry, inasmuch as all poetry worthy of the name is 
" more intense in meaning, and more concise in style," 
than prose. If in all real literature the writer's person- 
ality makes itself felt, more especially is this true in 
poetry. Not that the poet necessarily speaks of him- 
self or of his own feelings, but, even in epic narrative 
and dramatic representation, the personal qualities that 
are in him are sure to shine through. Some one has 
defined religion as morality touched with emotion. 
Much more truly might poetry be said to be thought 
touched with imagination and emotion. It is the 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 107 

presence of these two elements, imagination and emo- 
tion, informing the poet's thought, — elements which 
are essentially personal, — that gives to poetry its chief 
attraction, adds to it elevation, intensity, penetrating 
power. If then personality is even more characteristic 
of poetry than of prose, if poetry is thought and feeling 
in their in tensest, most condensed power, this implies 
that style is more essential to poetry than to prose. 

But what do we mean by style ? Mr. Matthew Ar- 
nold, who, when he speaks of these things, whether we 
agree with him or not, is always interesting and at- 
tractive, has told us very emphatically what be means 
by style. " Style," he says, " in my sense of the word, 
is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain 
spiritual excitement, a certain pressure of emotion, of 
what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dig- 
nity and distinction to it." Again he says, " Power of 
style, properly so called, as manifested in masters of 
style, like Dante and Milton in poetry, Cicero, Bossuet, 
and Bolingbroke in prose, has for its characteristic ef- 
fect this, to add dignity and distinction to it." An ad- 
mirable definition of certain kinds of style, no doubt. 
Dignity and distinction necessarily attend every good 
style, but to attain these, it would seem, to. judge by 
many of the examples which Mr. Arnold cites from Mil- 
ton and others, as though he demanded more recasting, 
rekneading of expression, than is at all necessary. He 
dwells so fondly on Milton's most elaborately wrought 
and artistically condensed lines, that one would almost 
be led to suppose, what cannot be, that he denies the 
highest praise to that most perfect style of all, which 
bears with it " the charm of an uncominunicable sim- 
plicity." I would therefore take leave to extend the 



108 POETIC STYLE IN 

meaning of poetic style a little wider, and to say that, 
whenever a man poetically gifted expresses his best 
thoughts in his best words, there we have the style which 
is natural to him, and which, if he be a true poet, is sure 
to be a good style. It may, no doubt, be something very 
different from the styles which have won the world's 
admiration in Virgil, in Dante, in Milton. Chaucer 
has none of that " peculiar kneading and recasting of 
expression " which these poets have. Yet Chaucer has 
a style of his own, in which all acknowledge a peculiar 
charm. Even a poet like Walter Scott, who paid little 
heed to style, and often worked carelessly, when he 
chooses to put forth his full power, compensates for the 
absence of many things by his winsome naturalness. 
In fact, every great poet has his own individual style, 
which we recognize at once when we meet with it. 

To attempt to characterize the style that is proper to 
each of the great masters is not my present purpose. 
But there is one point of view, from which they all ap- 
pear divided into two great classes as regards style. 
Some never appear except in their most finished style ; 
they allow nothing to escape them, which has not been 
touched in their best manner, elaborated with their deft- 
est hand. Of this order are Sophocles, Virgil, Horace, 
Milton, Gray. These are never seen abroad except in 
court dress, with ruffles and rapier. On the other hand, 
Homer, Shakespeare, Cowper, Wordsworth, above all 
Scott, are often content to work more slackly, and are 
not ashamed to appear in public with shooting-jacket 
and hobnailed shoes. Only when their genius is stirred 
by some great incident, some high thought, some over- 
mastering emotion, do they rise to their full pitch of 
power and display their hidden energy. Critics are apt 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 109 

to speak as if this latter class, who do not always walk 
on the highest levels of style, but sometimes descend 
nearer to prose, were by that very fact proved inferior 
to the^reat masters of style and metre, whose bow is 
always at the full bend. For my own part I take leave 
to doubt this canon. Rather, N it would seem to be a 
sign of more spontaneous genius, to be able sometimes 
to unstring its powers. In a long poem especially, the 
intervention of barer ground and more level tracts, far 
from impairing the total effect, affords relief to the mind 
and makes the surrounding heights stand out more impres- 
sively. Such alternations of style reflect the rising and 
falling, which is incident to the human spirit, more truly 
than the high pressure of uniformly sustained elevation. 
There is one malady to which poetic expression is, by 
its very nature, peculiarly exposed, and that is conven- 
tionalism. Even in the commonest prose writing there 
are, it is well known, a whole set of stock words and 
phrases which good taste instinctively avoids. It is not 
that these were originally bad in themselves, but they 
have become so worn and faded, that one never hears 
them without a sense of commonness and fatigue. A 
good writer keeps clear of such ruts, and finds some 
simpler and fresher mode of expressing what he has to 
say. But, if the danger of being entangled in outworn 
commonplaces besets the prose writer, much more does 
it waylay the poet. And for this reason : high-pitched 
imagination and vivid emotion tend, just because they 
are so vivid and so personal, to groove for themselves 
channels of language which are peculiar and unique. 
They shape for themselves a whole economy of diction 
$nd rhythm, which, from their very uncommonness, 
strike the ear and rivet the attention. Such diction and 



110 POETIC STYLE IN 

rhythm, admirable in the hands of the original poet who 
first moulded them for himself, have this drawback, that 
they lend themselves very easily to imitation. However 
racy and instinct with meaning a style may at first have 
been, when once it has got to be the common stock in 
trade of later and lesser poets, nothing can be more 
vapid and unreal than it becomes. It requires the shock 
of some great revolution to sweep this conventional dic- 
tion into the limbo " of weeds and outworn faces," be- 
fore the intellectual atmosphere can be left clear for a 
new and more natural growth of language. 

Not once only or twice, in the history of literature, 
has this malady of conventionalism smitten it to the 
core. The great Roman poet, perhaps the greatest 
artist of language the world has seen, created for him- 
self an elaborate rhythm and a high-wrought diction, 
tessellated with fragments from all former poets, yet 
worked into an exquisite and harmonious whole, which 
was simply inimitable. But in the hands of Silius Ital- 
icus, Statius, and others, the Virgilian hexameter gives 
one the sense of a faded imitation, from which the life 
has gone. Milton, perhaps the next greatest artist of 
language, moulded for himself a " grand style " of his 
own, with a similar result. When his blank verse, with 
its involved and inverted structure, became the heirloom 
of English poets, it spoiled all our blank verse for nearly 
two centuries. No meaner hand than that of the great 
master himself could wield his gigantic instrument. 
When its tones were recalled in the cumbrous descrip- 
tions of Thomson, and in the sonorous platitudes of 
Young, the result was weariness. Another tyrant, who 
for several generations dominated English verse, was 
Pope. What Milton did for blank verse, Pope did for 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. Ill 

the heroic couplet — left it as a tradition from which no 
poet of the last century could entirely escape. Gold- 
smith indeed, in his Deserted Village, and Gray in his 
Elegy, returned somewhat nearer to the language of 
natural feeling. But it was not till Burns and Cowper 
appeared that poetry was able to throw off the fetters 
of diction in which Milton and Pope had bound it. 
Burns and Cowper were the precursors of a revolt 
against the tyrant tradition, rather than the leaders of 
it. The return -they began towards a freer, more nat- 
ural diction came from an unconscious instinct for nat- 
ure, rather than from any formed theory, or from any 
announced principles, on which they composed. In 
Burns it may almost be said to have been a happy ac- 
cident. He had been reared where literary fashions 
were unknown. His strong intellect naturally loved 
plain reality, and his whole life was a rebellion against 
conventions and proprieties, good and bad alike. When 
his inspiration came, the language he found ready to 
his hand was, not the worn-out diction of Pope or Shen- 
stone, but the racy vernacular of his native country. It 
was well that he knew so little of literary modes, when 
he began his poetry. For late in life he confessed that, 
had he known more of the English poets of his time, he 
would not have ventured to use the homely " Westlan' 
jingle " which he has made classical. When he did at- 
tempt to write pure English verse, the result was third- 
rate conventional stuff. As for Cowper, it was only 
after a time, and then but in part, that he emancipated 
himself from the old trammels. In his first volume, 
published in 1782, containing Table Talk, Progress of 
Error, and other pieces, we see his fine wit and deli- 
cate feeling laboring to express themselves through the 



112 POETIC STYLE IN 

forced antithesis and monotonous rhythm of Pope. 
The blank verse of The Task is freer, and more unem- 
barrassed, and yet it contains a strange intermingling 
of several distinct manners. Almost in the same page 
you find the stately Miltonic style, with its tortuous in- 
volutions employed for homely, even for trivial mat- 
ters, and then, within a few lines, such passages of play- 
ful humor or sweet pensiveness as his address to his 
" pet hare," or his pathetic allusion to his own spiritual 
history in the lines beginning 

" I was a stricken deer that left the herd 
Long since." 

It is in such passages as these last that Cowper has ren- 
dered his best service to English poetry, by showing 
with what felicitous grace the blank verse lends itself to 
far other styles than the stately Miltonic movement. 
And yet towards the end of his life, in his translation 
of Homer, he returned to the Miltonic manner, and by 
doing so spoiled his work. 

Burns and Cowper then were, as I have said, the 
forerunners of the revolt against stereotyped poetic dic- 
tion, not the conscious leaders of it. The end of the 
old poetic regime came with the great outburst of new 
and original poetry which marked the last decade of the 
former century, and the first two decades of the present. 
It required some great catastrophe to remove the accu- 
mulations of used-up verbiage which had so long choked 
the sources of inspiration, and to cut for the fresh 
springs of poetic feeling new and appropriate channels. 
It was as though some great frozen lake, which had al- 
ready been traversed here and there with strange rents, 
were suddenly, in one night's thaw, broken up, and the 
old ice of style, which had so long fettered men's minds, 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 113 

were swept away forever. In the great chorus of song 
with which England greeted the dawn of this century, 
individuality had full swing. The exuberance, not to 
say the extravagance, of young genius was unchecked. 
His own impulse was to each poet law. Each uttered 
himself in his own way, in a style of his own, or with- 
out style, as native passion prompted. In their work 
there was much that was irregular, much that was im- 
perfect, but it was young imagination revelling in new- 
found freedom and strength. Criticism that had insight, 
— that could be helpful, — there was none extant. For 
Jeffrey with his Edinburgh Review did his little best to 
extinguish each rising genius as it appeared. Among 
the host of British poets then born into the world, six, 
at least, may be named of first-rate power. Each of 
these shaped for himself a style which was his own, in- 
dividual, manly, and, with whatever faults, effective. 
These six were Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, 
Shelley, Keats. Each of these had his own manner, 
and we know it. None of them, it is true, always 
maintained his own highest level of form, rhythm, and 
diction, as Milton did, as Gray may be said to have 
done. They were all of them, at times, hasty and even 
slovenly in style ; but each of them, when he was at his 
best, when he was grasping with his greatest strength, 
had substance, — something of his own to say, which 
.he did say in his own manner. Of these six poets only 
two have left criticism as well as poetry. In two of 
them, Scott, I mean, and Byron, the absence of criti- 
cism is conspicuous. For though Byron did maintain 
jsome critical controversy in favor of Pope, yet it is a 
crude sort of criticism, the offspring rather of prejudice 
and dislike to some contemporary poets, than of matured 

8 



114 POETIC STYLE IN 

judgment. The two younger poets, Keats and Shelley, 
though they both studied diligently the old poets, an- 
nounced few principles of criticism. Of all the poets of 
his time, Scott was the one who set least store by style. 
He worked always rapidly, often carelessly, writing 
whole pages, I might almost say cantos, which do not 
rise above ballad ding-dong. And yet when he put 
forth his full strength, on a subject which really kindled 
him, he could rise to a dignity and elevation truly im- 
pressive. Though the facility of the octosyllabic coup- 
let often betrayed him into carelessness, yet there are 
many passages, in which he has made it the best vehicle 
we possess for rapid and effective narrative — perhaps 
also for natural description. 

The early stanzas of The Lay, tlue opening lines of 
Marmion, the description of Flodden battle, — the most 
perfect battle-piece which English poetry contains, — 
these are samples of Scott's style at its best — a style 
which he has made entirely his own, and in which he 
has had no equal. Again, in the ballads of Rosabelle, 
and of The Eve of St. John, and in some others, he has 
lifted, as no other poet has done, the old ballad form 
to a higher power. In all forms of the ballad, and in 
romantic narrative, if in no other poetic style, Scott 
stands alone. 

Of the six poets above named, two only, as I said, 
were critics, Wordsworth and Coleridge. These both 
announced the principles by which they estimated poetry, 
and — what is noteworthy — their criticism, far from 
marring the originality of the poetry they composed, 
only enhanced its excellence. In his own practice, 
Wordsworth not only rejected the whole of the poetic 
diction that had been in vogue since the days of Dryden, 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 115 

not only fashioned for himself a style of his own, and 
forms of expression which his contemporaries derided, 
but which he maintained to be the natural and genuine 
language of true thought and feeling — he not only did 
this, but he gave to the world his reasons for doing so. 
The two prefaces appended to the Lyrical Ballads, in 
which he attacked the then fashionable poetic diction, 
and defended the principles on which he himself com- 
posed, are so well known that one need only allude 
to them now. The main positions which he maintained 
were, first, that poetry should leave the stereotyped 
phraseology of books, and revert to the language which 
common men, even peasants, use, when their conversa- 
tion is animated, and touched by more than ordinary 
emotion ; secondly, that the language of good poetry in 
no way differs from that of good prose. Even if 
Wordsworth in some points pressed his theory too far, 
yet no one who cares for such matters can read the 
reasoning of these prefaces without instruction. 

The two positions which Wordsworth maintained 
were examined by his friend Coleridge in some chap- 
ters of his Biographia Literaria, which, as they are not 
perhaps so well known as they deserve to be, I shall 
here attempt to summarize. 

While upholding most powerfully the genius of 
Wordsworth as a poet, Coleridge could not accept all 
the principles which his friend advocated, as a critic. 
He agreed with Wordsworth in condemning ' ; the gaudy 
aifectation of style which had long passed current for 
poetic diction," and asserted that, with some few illus- 
trious exceptions, the poetic language in use, " from 
Pope's translation of Homer to Darwin's Temple of 
Nature, may claim to be poetic, for no better reason 



116 POETIC STYLE IN 

than that it would be intolerable in conversation or in 
prose." He showed, moreover, that the faults which 
disgusted Wordsworth were as much violations of com- 
mon-sense and logic, as of poetic excellence. Yet while 
agreeing with Wordsworth in the object of his attack, 
he did not approve all the arguments with which Words- 
worth had assailed it, or assent to all the articles of the 
poetic creed which his friend laid down. 

In opposition to Wordsworth, Coleridge maintained 
that the peasantry do not, as Wordsworth held, speak a 
language better adapted to poetic purposes than that 
which educated men speak, and that peasants have 
not the primary feelings and affections simpler, truer, 
deeper than other men. If Wordsworth had found it 
so among the Cumberland dalesmen, this arose from 
exceptional circumstances — circumstances which have 
now almost disappeared. The peasantry of the midland 
or southern counties are in no way purer or nobler than 
men in higher station. Coleridge further protests against 
Wordsworth's advice to adopt into poetry the language 
of rustics, only purifying it from provincialisms ; and he 
maintains that the language of the most educated writers, 
Hooker, Baker, Burke, is as real as that of any peasant, 
while it covers a far wider range of ideas, feelings, and 
experiences. The language of these writers differs far 
.ess from the usage of cultivated society, than the lan- 
guage of Wordsworth's homeliest poems differs from the 
talk of bullock-drivers. 

Again, Coleridge will not hear of the doctrine that, 
between the language of prose and that of metrical com- 
position, there is no essential difference. For, since 
poetry implies more passion and greater excitement of 
all the faculties than prose, this excitement must make 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 117 

itself felt in the language that expresses it. Of this 
excited feeling metre is the natural vehicle — metre, 
which has it origin in emotion, tempered and mastered 
by will ; or, as Coleridge expresses it, metre, which is 
the result of the balance which the mind strikes by its 
voluntary effort to check the working of passion. Plence, 
as the use of metrical language implies a union of: spon- 
taneous impulse and voluntary purpose, both of these 
elements ought to reflect themselves in the poet's dic- 
tion. The presence of these two elements, both at a 
high pitch, must necessarily color the language of the 
poet, and separate it from that of the prose-writer, which 
expresses rather the calmer workings of the pure under- 
standing. While thus dissenting from Wordsworth's 
arguments in the unqualified extent to which he urged 
them, Coleridge showed that what Wordsworth really 
meant to enforce was his preference for the language 
of nature and good sense before all forms of affected 
ornamentation — for a style as remote as possible from 
the false and gaudy splendor which had so long usurped 
the name of poetry. The thing Wordsworth really 
desired to see was a neutral style, common to prose 
and poetry alike, in which everything should be ex- 
pressed in as direct a way as one would wish to talk, 
yet in which everything should be dignified and attrac- 
tive. Such a neutral style Coleridge showed that Eng- 
lish poetry already possessed, and he cited examples of 
it from Chaucer, Spenser, and other poets. This, he 
oelieves, is what Wordsworth in his theory was aiming 
at. But is it not, exclaims Coleridge, surprising that 
such a theory should have come from — that the estab- 
lishment of a neutral style should have been advocated 
by — a poet whose diction, next to that of Shakespeare 



118 POETIC STYLE IN 

and of Milton, was the most individualized and charac- 
teristic of all our poets ? For in all Wordsworth's most 
elevated poems, whether in rhyme or in blank verse, he 
rises, says Coleridge, into a diction peculiarly his own — 
a style which every one at once recognizes as Words- 
worth's. Evidently Coleridge would not have assented 
to Mr. Arnold's saying that Wordsworth has no style. 
The chapters of the Biographia Literaria in which 
Coleridge questions Wordsworth's canons of criticism, 
and goes on to vindicate the excellence of his poetry, 
are well worthy of careful study by all who care for 
such matters. Taken along with many fragments scat- 
tered throughout the same author's Literary Remains, 
they form perhaps the finest criticism which our lan- 
guage possesses. 

It would seem to show that criticism does not neces- 
sarily suppress imagination, when we turn to the poetry 
of these two poet-critics, and find how high an imagi- 
native quality belongs to both. No one whose judgment 
is worth anything has ever questioned Wordsworth's 
power of imagination, or denied that the substance of 
his poetry is preeminently imaginative. But the gift of 
style has been denied him, and that by no less an au- 
thority than Mr. Arnold. In the fine and suggestive 
preface with which Mr. Arnold has introduced his re- 
cent admirable Selections from Wordsworth, he has said 
that Wordsworth has no style ; he has fine Miltonic 
lines, but he has no assured poetic style of his own, like 
Milton. When he seeks to have a style of his own, it 
seems, he falls into ponderosity and pomposity. Prob- 
ably Mr. Arnold here uses the word " style " in some re- 
stricted sense, meaning by it such artistic form as those 
writers only display who have fashioned their English 



MODERN ENGLISH FOE TRY. 119 

on the model of ancient classic poets. It is true that in 
this sense Wordsworth has no study of poetic style, but 
no more had Shakespeare. It may be true that when 
he seeks to have a style he falls into pomposity. This 
is just what one would expect — that when a poet seek3 
to have a style, he should cease to be himself, and 
should fall into some absurdity. But it is exactly 
because Wordsworth so seldom sought to have a style, 
because, when he is most sincere, most fully inspired, 
he never thought of style, but only of the object before 
him, because he was so entirely absorbed in the thing 
he saw, and sought only how most directly to express 
it — it is this sincerity and wholeness of inspiration that 
enables him to express his thoughts with the most per- 
fect purity, the most transparent clearness, the most 
simple and single-minded strength of which the English 
language is capable. If by poetic style we mean the 
expression of the best thoughts in the best and most 
beautiful words, and with the most appropriate melody 
of rhythm, in this sense Wordsworth, when at his best, 
has a style of his own, which is perfect after its kind. 
When at his best, I say ; for it cannot be denied that, 
in the large amount of poetry which he has left, there 
is a good deal which falls below his highest level. 

Take his lyrical pieces, those which are the product 
of his best decade, between 1798 and 1808. They are 
so well known that I need hardly allude to them. The 
lines on The Cuckoo, " O blithe newcomer ! " " She 
was a phantom of delight," " I heard a thousand blended 
notes ; " the poems about Lucy, The two April Mornings, 
The Fountain, The Solitary Reaper, The Poet's Epi- 
taph, — if these are not poems in a style at once unique 
and perfect, our language has no such poems. Or turn 



120 POETIC STYLE IN 

to the sonnets. Among so large a number of these as 

Wordsworth composed, there is of course great variety 

of excellence. But it is hardly possible to conceive 

more lucid, nervous, or dignified language than that in 

which the best of his sonnets are expressed. Take, for 

nstance, the morning sonnet on "Westminster Bridge, 

and the evening one beginning 

"It is a beauteous evening, calm and free." 

Can language render sentiment more perfectly than 

these do ? In these and a few others, Wordsworth 

triumphs over the last difficulty which, from its very 

structure, besets the sonnet. He rises above all sense 

of effort — the thought runs off pure and free. The 

series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets are far from his best. 

They were made to order, rather than by spontaneous 

impulse. Yet even these contain lines so dignified and 

distinguished in style that, when once heard, they stamp 

themselves on the memory forever. It is in these we 

hear of the shattered tower, which 

"could not even sustain 
Some casual shout that broke the silent air, 
Or the tmimaginable touch of time." 

In these, that regretful aspiration breathed amid mould- 
ering abbeys — 

" Once ye were holy, ye are holy still ; 
Your spirit freely let me drink, and live." 

In these, too, that fine ejaculation inside of King's Col- 
lege chapel, Cambridge — 

" They dreamt not of a perishable home, 
Who thus could build." 

Again, spirited narrative was not much in Words- 
worth's way, but description was. In The White Doe of 
Rylstone the incidents are of little account, the senti- 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 121 

ment is deep as the world. The first hundred . and 
seventy lines of that poem, for mellowed diction, for 
rhythm and melody appropriate to the meditative and 
pensive theme, are a study in themselves. The octo- 
syllabic metre has nowhere, that I know, lent itself to 
more finely modulated music, as soothing as the murmur 
of Wharfe Eiver, by the green holm of Bolton. 

Of Wordsworth's blank verse there is much, no doubt, 
which may freely be made over to the scourge of the 
critic. It is often cumbrous, prolix, altogether prosy. 
The last Book of The Excursion, for instance, which 
tells how the Wanderer and his friends, 

" seated in a ring partook 
The beverage drawn from China's fragrant herb," 

and discussed matters social and educational over their 
tea, would have been better written as a pamphlet than 
as a poem. Whole pages, too, of The Prelude there are, 
which are little more than wordy prose cut into ten- 
syllable lines. Yet let me whisper to the docile reader, 
if not to the self-complacent critic, that, even in the 
least effective of Wordsworth's blank verse, he will find 
in every page some line, or phrase, or thought, weighty 
with individual genius. Even admitting that Words- 
worth does, like Homer, sometimes nap, and oftener in 
blank verse than elsewhere, yet even in his blank verse, 
when he is really possessed by his subject and kindles 
with it, he has attained a majesty and a power which 
make it more rememberable than any blank verse since 
Milton's. Of this kind is the blank verse of Michael, 
the Lines on Tintern Abbey, many a passage in The 
Prelude, such as the description of a mountain-pass in 
the high Alps ; of this kind, too, are some of the nar- 
rative parts of The Excursion — the story of Margaret 



122 POETIC STYLE IN 

in the First Book, the story of Ellen, the village maiden, 
betrayed and repentant, in the Seventh Book : 

" Meek saint ! by suffering glorified on earth ! 
In whom, as by her lonely hearth she sat, 
The ghastly face of cold decay put on 
A sun-like beauty, and appeared divine ! " 

It would be easy to go on quoting passages or poems 
without number, which bear out the assertion that 
Wordsworth fashioned for himself a style as unlike as 
possible to the vapid poetic diction which he denounced, 
but akin to whatever is manliest, noblest, and best in the 
English poetry of all ages. Many causes were doubt- 
less at work to put out that outworn poetic language. 
But no one agency did so much to discredit it as the 
protest which Wordsworth made against it in his pref- 
aces, and still more by the example of his poems. 
These have set a standard of what a pure and sincere 
diction in poetry should be, just as the sermons and 
other writings of Dr. Newman have done in prose. Both 
have alike evoked new power from the English language, 
and shown what capabilities it possesses of insinuating 
its tendrils into the deepest and most recondite veins 
of thought, as well as into the tenderest sentiment by 
which any spirit of man is visited. 

Coleridge we have seen as a critic. One word about 
his poetry ; for he is perhaps the finest instance we have 
in England of the critical and poetical power combined. 
The editions of his poems usually published contain 
much that is casual and second-rate, especially among 
his early poems and his Religious Musings. They con- 
tain also something which no other poet could have 
given. Of his best pieces it may be said, in the words 
of a living poet and critic with whom, in this instance, 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 123 

I am glad to agree, " The world has nothing like them, 
nor can have ; they are of highest kind, and of their 
own." These best pieces are Christabel, The Ancient 
Mariner, and Kubla Khan. Over this last fragment Mr. 
Swinburne, who, when he does admire, knows no stint 
in his admiration, goes into raptures, and exhausts even 
his eulogistic vocabulary. " The most wonderful of all 
poems," he calls it. " In reading it," he says,- " we are 
rapt into that paradise where ' music and color and per- 
fume are one ; ' where you hear the hues, and see the 
harmonies of heaven. For absolute melody and splendor 
it were hardly rash to call it the first poem of the lan- 
guage." Especially he dotes over these lines in it : 

"Five miles meandering with a mazy motion 
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, 
Then reached the caverns measureless to man, 
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean ; 
And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far 
Ancestral voices prophesying war." 

It is not wonderful that a poet, who himself revels in 
melodious words, should go into ecstasies over a poem 
which his own favorite devices of alliteration, and as- 
sonance, and rhythm have done their best to make a 
miracle of music. For my part, I cannot compare 
Kubla Khan with Christabel. The magical beauty of 
the latter has been so long canonized in the world's 
estimate, that to praise it now would be unseemly. It 
brought into English poetry an atmosphere of wonder 
and mystery, of weird beauty and pity combined, which 
was quite new at the time it appeared, and has never 
since been approached. The movement of its subtle 
cadences has a union of grace with power, which only 
tfie finest lines of Shakespeare can parallel. As we 
read Christabel and a few other of Coleridge's pieces, 
we recall his own words : — 



124 POETIC STYLE IN 

" In a half-sleep we dream, 
And dreaming hear thee still, singing lark! 
That singest like an angel in the clouds." 

To leave those few poems, in which Coleridge has 
touched the supernatural world with so matchless skill, 
and to come nearer earth, take, as a fine specimen of 
his style in human things, the opening and closing stan- 
zas of his Ode on France. What " a musical sweep " 
there is in those long-sustained paragraphs ! Coleridge, 
from his temperament, was not often at the full pitch 
of his powers; but when he was, he possessed a style 
which, for inner delicacy and grace, combined with in- 
spired strength and free-sweeping movement, made him 
one of the few masters of poetic diction, one who, we 
may be quite sure, will in our language remain unsur- 
passed. Too early he forsook the Muse, or the Muse 
forsook him ; and the most subtle imagination of his 
time was plunged in the Serbonian bog of German 
metaphysics. Yet in his old age the Muse for brief 
moments revisited him, and he threw off a few short 
jets of epigrammatic song, or such lines as those entitled 
Youth and Age, in which we hear once more the old 
witchery. 

Wordsworth and Coleridge were critics and poets at 
once, and it is because they were so that, in speaking 
of style, I have dwelt at length on their critical prin- 
ciples and their poetic performance. Byron, on the 
other hand, was exclusively a poet, and no critic. Of 
him Mr. Swinburne has truly said that his critical fac- 
ulty was zero, or even a frightful minus quantity. He 
had never even attempted to master his art, or to take 
the measure of himself, and to know the nature of the 
materials he had to work with. In all that he did he 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 125 

trusted simply to the fiery force that stirred him, and 
took counsel only with his own fierce Titanic spirit. It 
is by the vast strength and volume of his powers, rather 
than by any one perfect work, that he is to be estimated. 
He does not seem to have had any delicacy of ear for 
the refinements of metre, or to have studied the intri- 
cacies of it. But, when the impulse came, he poured 
himself forth with wonderful rapidity, home-thrusting 
directness, and burning eloquence — eloquence that car- 
ries you over much that is faulty in structure, and im- 
perfect or monotonous in metre. He himself did not 
stay to consider the way he said things, so intent was 
he on the things he had to say. Neither any more 
does the reader. His cadences were few, but they were 
strong and impressive, and carried with them, for the 
time, every soul that heard them. If we look for what 
is most characteristic, in Byron's poetic style, it is not 
to his romantic narratives that we turn — to his Giaours 
and his Laras. Neither is it to Childe Harold, much 
as it contains of interest, for in the Spenserian stanza 
Byron was never quite at ease. It was only after at- 
tempting many styles, with more or less success, that at 
last he hit upon a style entirely his own — entirely fitted 
to express all the various and discordant tones of his 
wayward spirit. The note which he first struck in Bep- 
■po, he carried to its full compass in Don Juan. In the 
i4 ottava rima " — that light, fluent, plastic measure which 
he made at once and forever his own — he found a fit 
vehicle for the comic vein that had long slumbered 
within him, of which in his earlier poems he had given 
no sign, as well as for the satire that he commanded, 
a satire sometimes light and playful, oftener scornful 
and cynical, yet even in the midst of its wildest license 



126 POETIC STYLE IN 

and ribaldry, from time to time suspending itself, that 
the poet may flash out into splendid description, or melt 
into pathetic retrospect or brief but thrilling regret. 
For good or for evil, it must be said that all the variety 
of Byron's moods, and his most characteristic style, are 
faithfully embodied in the peculiar texture and original 
versification of Don Juan. 

Byron, as all know, often affected gloom And played 
with misanthropy, and his poems reflecting these moods 
are all, more or less, in a falsetto tone. The sincerest, 
as they are the most touching poems, expressive of his 
personal feelings, are the Domestic Pieces and those on 
Thyrza, and sincerity gives to these verses a beauty 
which, once felt, can never be forgotten. Over blank 
verse he had no great mastery ; and yet he has one 
poem in this measure, in which, he reverts to his early 
love with a simple sincerity and a piercing pathos which 
have never been surpassed. In the Dream, it is the 
very artlessness that makes the charm. The lines thrill 
with intense and passionate sincerity. . On the whole, of 
Byron's style it may be said that, if it has none of the 
subtle and curious felicities in which some poets delight, 
it is yet language in its first intention, not reflected over 
or exquisitely distilled, but, in his strongest moments, 
coming direct from himself, and going direct to the 
heart. Placed under the critical microscope, his lan- 
guage, no doubt, shows many flaws and faults, but far 
beyond any of his contemporaries he has the manly 
force, the directness, the eloquence which passion gives. 
Passionate eloquence is the chief characteristic of his 
style. 

Among the poets who appeared in the first two dec- 
ades of this century, as among all poets, readers will 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 127 

2hoose their favorites according to their sympathies. 
But putting aside personal preferences, every one must 
allow that none of the poets of that time was more 
" radiant with genius," and more rich in promise, than 
the short-lived Keats. His genius showed itself in a 
wonderful power of style, which, after striking many 
notes and reflecting many colors, caught from the old 
poets he loved, was settling down into a noble style of 
his own, when his brief life closed. His first poem, 
Endymion, for all its crudeness and extravagance, un- 
deniably revealed the vitality of young genius, and re- 
claimed for English poetry the original freedom of the 
ten-syllable couplet, which had been lost since the days 
of Chaucer. The influence of Spenser, who was the 
earliest idol of Keats, is strong in his tales, The Eve of 
St. Agnes and Isabella. There is in them, too, some 
flavor of the Italian poets, whom he studied much 
while he was composing his tales. The " grand style " 
of Milton has never been so marvellously reproduced as 
in Hyperion; but from this great fragment Keats him- 
self turned with some impatience, pressing on to utter 
himself in a style more genuinely his own. This he 
attained in his odes On a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, 
To a Nightingale, and in a few of his sonnets. In 
these he was leaving behind him all traces of early man- 
nerism, and attaining to that large utterance, — combin- 
'ng simplicity with richness, strength with freedom and 
grace of movement, — which was worthy of himself. 
The odes especially, so finished, so full of artistic beauty, 
flow forth into full sonorous harmonies, which leave no 
?ense of effort. In his later poems, from behind the 
love of sensuous beauty, which was the groundwork of 
his genius, there was coming out a deeper thoughtful- 



128 POETIC STYLE IN 

ness and humanity, which make us the more regret his 
early fate. Perhaps there is no other instance of so in- 
stinctive a yearning towards the old Hellenic life as is 
to be seen in Keats. His thirst for artistic beauty could 
find no full satisfaction in the productions of the cold 
north, and turned intuitively to the fair creations of the 
elder world, as to its native element. This is the more 
remarkable, as we know that Keats was so slenderly 
equipped with what is called scholarship that he could 
reach the Greek poets only through translations. His 
classical instinct shows itself not only in his love of 
Greek subjects and Greek mythology, but in his won- 
derful reproduction of Greek form. As we read such 
lines as these : 

" What little town by river or sea-shore, 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
is emptied of its folk this pious morn ? " 

or these on the nightingale's song : 

u The same that found a path, 
Through the sad heart of Euth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn " — 

we ask, What finished Greek scholar has ever so vividly 
recalled the manner of the Greeks ? 

To speak of the style of Shelley there rs no space 
here, and, as comments on his poetry have of late been 
so rife, there is the less need. Suffice it to say that un- 
biassed criticism generally admits that his exuberant 
power of language often overmastered him, and his de- 
light in melodious words tempted him at times to sacri- 
fice sense to sound. Condensation and self-repression 
would have improved much that he wrote. On the 
other hand, all must feel that by his subtle sense of 
beauty he caught many a vanishing hue of earth and 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 129 

sky, which no poet before him had noticed, and ex- 
pressed many a tone of longing and regret, which no 
language but his has ever hinted. 

Fifty years and more have passed since the voices of 
all the great poets I have named became mute, and in 
the interval between then and now England has had 
n: lack of poetry. Whether any of it has reached as 
high a level as the best works of the masters of the 
former generation, may be doubted. The world is not 
likely soon again to see another flood of inspiration like 
that which burst on England with the opening of this 
century. In the poetry of the last fifty years many 
notes have been struck, so many and so different, that 
it would not be easy to characterize them all. On the 
whole, it may perhaps be said, that two main branches 
of poetic tendency are discernible, — one which carries 
on the impulse and the style derived from Keats and 
Shelley, one which more or less is representative of 
Wordsworth's influence. Of these two tones the former 
would seem most to have won the world's ear, and its 
chief voice is that of the Poet Laureate. Mr. Tenny- 
son is, as all know, before all things an artist ; and as 
such he has formed for himself a composite and richly- 
wrought style, into the elaborate texture of which 
many elements, fetched from many lands and from 
many things, have entered. His selective mind has 
taken now something from Milton, now something from 
Shakespeare, besides pathetic cadences from the old 
ballads, stately wisdom from Greek tragedians, epic 
tones from Homer. And not only from the remote 
past, but from the present ; the latest science and phi- 
losophy both lend themselves to his thought, and add 
metaphor and variety to his language. It is this elabo- 



130 POETIC STYLE IN 

ration of style, this " subtle trail of association, this play 
of shooting colors," pervading the texture of his poetry, 
which has made him be called the English Virgil. But 
if it were asked which of his immediate predecessors 
most influenced his nascent powers, it would seem that, 
while his early lyrics recall the delicate grace of Cole- 
ridge, and some of his idyls the plainness of Words- 
worth, while the subtle music of Shelley has fascinated 
his ear, yet, more than any other poet, Keats, with his 
rich sensuous coloring, is the master whose style he has 
caught and prolonged. In part from Shelley, and still 
more from Keats, has proceeded that rich-melodied and 
highly colored style which has been regnant in English 
poetry for the last half century. Tennyson has been the 
chief artist in it, but it has been carried on by a whole 
host of lesser workmen. 

Beside this, the dominant style, there has lived an- 
other, more direct, more plain, more severe, which, 
without in any way imitating, has represented the in- 
fluence of Wordsworth. However differing in other 
respects, Keble, Sir Henry Taylor, Archbishop Trench, 
and Arthur Clough, each in his own way, represent this 
socond tendency, which I may call the plain-speaking, 
unornamented, and natural style. There is a passage 
in Mr. Arnold's preface to his Selections from Words- 
worth, which all who have read must remember, in 
which he speaks of Wordsworth's nobly plain manner, 
" when Nature herself seems to take the pen out of his 
hand, and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, 
penetrating power." But this characteristic, which Mr. 
Arnold has noted as occasional, occurring in a few 
poems, such as The Leech Gatherer and Michael, may 
be extended to all of best that Wordsworth has done. 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 131 

It brings out, in fact, the broad and radical distinction, 
enforced by the late Mr. Bagehot, between pure art 
and ornate art. 

Pure art is that which, whether it describes a scene," 
a character, or a sentiment, lays hold of its inner mean- 
ing, not its surface ; the type which the thing embodies, 
not the accidents ; the core or heart of it, not the ac- 
cessories. As Mr. Bagehot expressed it, the perfection 
of pure art is "' to embody typical conceptions in the 
choicest, the fewest accidents, to embody them so that 
each of these accidents may produce its full effect, and 
so to embody them without effort." Descriptions of 
this kind, while they convey typical conceptions, yet 
retain perfect individuality. They are done by a few 
strokes, in the fewest possible words ; but each stroke 
tells, each word goes home. Of 'this kind is the poetry 
of the Psalms and of the Hebrew prophets. It is seen 
in the brief impressive way in which Dante presents 
the heroes or heroines of his nether world, as compared 
with Virgil's more elaborate pictures. In all of Words- 
worth that has really impressed the world, this will be 
found to be the chief characteristic. It is seen espe- 
cially in his finest lyrics, and in his most impressive son- 
nets. Take only three poems which stand together in 
his works, Glen Almain, Stepping Westward, The Soli- 
tary Reaper. In each, you have a scene and its senti- 
ment, brought home with the minimum of words, the 
maximum of power. It is distinctive of the pure style 
that it relies not on side effects, but on the total impres- 
sion — that it produces a unity in which all the parts 
are subordinated to one paramount aim. The imagery 
is appropriate, never excessive. You are not distracted 
by glaring single lines or too splendid images. There 



132 POETIC STYLE IN 

is one tone, and that all-pervading — reducing all the 
materials, however diverse, into harmony with the one 
sentiment that dominates the whole. This style in its 
perfection is not to be attained by any rules of art. 
The secret of it lies farther in than rules of art can 
reach ; even in this : that the writer sees his object, 
and this only ; feels the sentiment of it, and this only ; 
is so absorbed in it, lost in it, that he altogether forgets 
himself and his style, and cares only, in fewest and 
most vital words, to convey to others the vision his own 
soul sees. This power of intense sincerity, of total 
absorption in an object which is not self, is not given 
to many men, not even to men otherwise highly gifted. 
But without this, the pure style in full perfection is not 
possible. It comes to this : that in order to attain the 
truest and best style, a man must, for the time at least, 
forget style and think only of things. One instance 
more of that great law of ethics, whereby the abandon- 
ment of some lower end, in obedience to a higher aim, 
is made the very condition of securing the lower one. 
To employ the pure style in its full power requires the 
presence of a seer, a prophet-soul ; and prophet-souls are 
few, even among poets. 

The ornate style in poetry is altogether different from 
this. When a scene, a sentiment, a character, has to 
be described, it does not penetrate at once, as the pure 
style penetrates, to the idea which informs the scene, 
the sentiment, the character ; it does not place the scene 
before you, impressed by a few words on the mind for- 
ever. But it gathers round the scene or the character, 
which it seeks to delineate, many of the most striking 
accessories and associations which it suggests, and sets 
it before you, clad in the richest and most splendid 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 133 

drapery the subject will bear. It sees the informing 

idea, and expresses it ; but by its adjuncts rather than 

by its bare essence. The vision of the inner reality is 

not intense enough to make it impatient of accessories 

and ornamentation. It so delights in imagery, distant 

allusion, classical retrospect, that the attention is apt to 

be led off by these, and to neglect the central subject. 

This ornate style, redundant with splendid imagery, 

loaded with cloying music, is much in vogue with our 

modern poets. Mr. Tennyson, who has employed vari- - 

ous styles, and sometimes the pure and severe style, has 

done more of his work in the ornate. As one instance, 

take his poem on Love and Duly, It is intense with 

passion, the thought is noble and nobly rendered. But 

after the agony of parting, it occurs to the lover that 

perhaps the thought of him might still come back, and 

the poem closes thus : 

" If unforgotten ! should it cross thy dreams, 
So might it come, like one that looks content, 
"With quiet eyes, unfaithful to the truth, 
Or point thee forward to a distant light, 
Or seem to lift a burden from thy heart, 
And leave thee freer, till thou wake refreshed, 
Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown 
Full quire, and morning driven her plough of pearl 
Far-furrowing into light the mounded rack, 
Between the fair green field and eastern sea." 

This description of morning is no doubt very pretty, 
but one has always felt that it might well have been 
spared, after the passionate parting scene immediately 
before it. 

" A dressy literature, an exaggerated literature, seem 
to be fated to us. These are our curses, as other times 
had theirs." With these words Mr. Bagehot closes his 
essay to which I have alluded. No doubt the multitude 



134 POETIC STYLE IN 

of uneducated and half-educated readers, which every 
day increases, loves a highly ornamented, not to say a 
meretricious, style, both in literature and in the arts ; 
and if these demand it, writers and artists will be found 
to furnish it. There remains, therefore, to the most 
educated the task of counterworking this evil. With 
them it lies to elevate the thought, and to purify the 
taste, of less cultivated readers, and so to remedy one 
of the evils incident to democrac}^. To high thinking 
and noble living the pure style is natural. But these 
things are severe, require moral bracing, minds which 
are not luxurious, but can endure hardness. Softness, 
luxuriousness, and moral limpness find their congenial 
element in excess of highly colored ornamentation. 

On the whole, when once a man is master of himself, 
and of his materials, the best rule that can be given him 
is, to forget style altogether, and to think only of the 
thing to be expressed. The more the mind is intent 
on this, the simpler, truer, more telling the style will be. 
The advice, which the great preacher gives for conduct, 
holds not less for writing of all kinds : " Aim at things, 
and your words will be right without aiming. Guard 
against love of display, love of singularity, love of 
seeming original. Aim at meaning what you say, and 
saying what you mean." When a man who is full of 
his subject, and has matured his powers of expression, 
sets himself to speak thus simply and sincerely, what- 
ever there is in him of strength or sweetness, of dignity 
o" <srace, of humor or pathos, will find its ways out nat- 
urally into J»j« language. That language will be true 
to his thought, ^rrie to the man himself. Free from 
self-consciousness, fret> f rom mannerism, it will still bear 
the impress of whatever i s best in his individuality. 



MODERN ENGLISH POETRY. 135 

And yet there is something better even than the best 
individuality — a region of selfless humanity, of pure, 
transparent ether, into which the best spirits sometimes 
ascend. In that region there is no trace, no color of 
individuality any more. The greatest poets, uttering 
their highest inspirations, there attain a style which is 
colorless, and speak a common language. It is but in 
rare moments that even they attain these heights, but 
sometimes they do attain them. 

HdAAoi \kkv OviJtoU yKSxraai, fxia 5' adavaTOwri. 

(" Mortals speak many tongues, the immortals one." 



CHAPTER VI. 

VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

Those who have read will no doubt remember an 
essay on Virgil by Mr. Frederick Myers, which ap- 
peared in the Fortnightly Review of February, 1879. I 
speak, I believe, the experience of many, when I say 
that it is long since I have read any piece of criticism 
with so much interest, I might say delight. 

To some the spirit in which it is written may appear 
too enthusiastic — the style perhaps may be a shade too 
florid. But it possesses, I think, that one highest merit 
of criticism — indeed the only thing which makes any 
criticism worth reading — it is evidently the work of one 
who has seen more clearly, and felt more vividly, than 
others have done, the peculiar excellence of Virgil ; and 
who longs to make others see and feel it. 

Speaking of a certain essay on Shakespeare by a 
Mrs. Montague, Dr. Johnson once said, " No, sir, there 
is no real criticism in it ; none showing the beauty of 
thought, as founded on the workings of the human 
heart." That word of the stern old critic well expresses 
what is the true function of his own craft, the only 
thing that makes poetic criticism worth having — when 
some competent person uses it to explain to the world 
in general, who really do not see far in such matters, 
those permanent truths of human feeling on which some 
great poem is built. For, after all, the reputation which 
attaches to even the greatest — Homer, Shakespeare, 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 137 

and the like — depends on the verdict of a few. They 
see iDto the core of the matter, tell the world what it 
ought to see and feel ; the world receives their saying 
and repeats it. Mr. Myers has seen anew the truth 
about Virgil, and expressed it. And, strange to say, 
this needed to be done, even at this late date, for our 
age. 

This century, as we all know, has seen a great de- 
cline in the world's estimate of Virgil. Niebuhr and 
the Germans began it, and, as usual, England followed 
suit. Perhaps the thing was inevitable. One reason 
was, that Virgil could not but suffer from the compari- 
son with Homer, which advancing scholarship brought 
on. Another reason was, that a civilization which, like 
our own, has reached a late stage turns with an instinct- 
ive relish towards the poets of the early time, still 
fresh with the dew of youth. To the heat and languor 
of the afternoon, nothing is so grateful as the coolness 
and freshness of the dawn. The poetry of an age in 
many ways so akin to our own as Virgil's was is apt to 
pall on our taste, and to meet with scanty justice. If 
from causes like these Virgil's reputation has for a time 
suffered eclipse, we may hope that the glad deliverance 
has begun, and that he is now passing back to that 
serener heaven which rightfully belongs to him. One 
symptom of a return to a truer judgment of Virgil is to 
be found in the admirable essay by Mr. Myers of which 
I have spoken. Another is Professor Sellar's work on 
Virgil, which has given, probably for the first time in 
English scholarship, a just and well-balanced estimate 
of the true nature and excellence of Virgilian poetry. 

The truth is, to compare Virgil and Homer, except 
to contrast them, is a mistake. Who does not at 



138 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

once feel that of that in which Homer's chief strength 
lay Virgil has but a meagre share ? Heroic portraiture 
was not in his way. He has depicted no characters 
which live in the world's imagination, as those of Achilles 
and Hector, of Ulysses and Ajax, of Priam and An- 
dromache live. To throw himself into the joy of the 
onset was so alien to Virgil's whole turn of thought 
that one could almost wish that it had been possible 
for him to have constructed an JEneid, in which battles 
could have been dispensed with. The tenth book of the 
JEneid, though it has many vigorous touches, is pale 
and ineffectual beside the Homeric battle-pieces. In 
the words of a modern poet, Virgil might have said : — 

" The moving accident is not my trade, 
To freeze the blood I have no ready arts ; 
'Tis my delight alone in summer shade 
To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts." 

In fact, all that forms the charm of Homer's poetry 
was simply impossible, and would have been unnatural, 
to one living in Virgil's day. The keen morning air, 
the strong-beating pulses of youth, unreflecting delight 
in all sights of nature, and in all actions of men, could 
not belong to a poet living in a civilization that was 
old and smitten with decay. But if these things were 
denied, other things were given, such as a late time could 
give — the mellow, if somewhat sad, wisdom that comes 
from a world's experience, the human-hearted sympathy 
that, looking back over wide tracts of time on the toils 
and sufferings of man, feels the full pathos of the human 
story, and yet is not without some consoling hope. 

It is well known in what special honor the early 
Christian Fathers held Virgil. St. Augustine styled 
him the finest and noblest of poets. St. Jerome, who 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 139 

looked severely on all heathen writers, allows that to 
read Virgil was a necessity for boys, but complains that 
even priests in his day turned to him for pleasure. 

In the middle age he was regarded by some as a 
magician ; by others as a prophet or a saint. His form 
was found sculptured on the stalls of a cathedral among 
the Old Testament worthies ; in a picture of the Nativity, 
where David and the prophets are singing round The 
Child, Virgil is seen leading the concert. His verses 
are found in the burial-places of the catacombs, asso- 
ciated with the cross and the monogram of our Lord. 
The power with which he has laid hold of the Christian 
imagination is proved by nothing more than by the 
place Dante assigns him in his Divina Commedia, as 
his teacher and his guide to the nether world. You 
remember the words with which Dante addresses him 
on his first appearance : — 

" Art thou, then, that Virgil — that fountain which pours 
forth abroad so rich a stream of speech ? O glory and light 
of other poets ! May the long zeal avail me, and the great 
love that made me search thy volume. Thou art my master 
and my author ; thou alone art he from whom I took the 
good style that hath done me honor. 1 " 

This general consent of the primitive and the middle 
ages to adopt Virgil among the possible if not actual 
saints of Christendom arose, no doubt, from the belief 
that in his fourth Eclogue he had prophesied the advent 
of Christ. Constantine, in his discourse Ad Sanctos, 
quoted it as a prophecy. Lactantius agreed that it had 
a Christian meaning. St. Augustine accepted it as a 
genuine prophecy, and read in the thirteenth and four- 

1 J. Carlyle's Translation of Dante's Inferno. 



140 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

teentli verses of that Eclogue a distinct prediction of 
the remission of sins. 

This interpretation of the Eclogue, which would 
seem to have lingered on till Pope's time, when he 
imitated it in his Messiah, has for long been discred- 
ited. The Child that was to be born, of which the 
Eclogue speaks, whether the son of Pollio, or the 
daughter of Augustus, was far enough from being a 
regenerator of the world. While, however, we reject 
the grounds which the early Fathers and the men of 
the middle age would have given for their belief in 
Virgil's religious, even Christian spirit, we need not re- 
ject the belief itself. Though the reason they gave for 
it was false, the conception may have been true. There 
is in Virgil a vein of thought and sentiment more devout, 
more humane, more akin to the Christian, than is to be 
found in any other ancient poet, whether Greek or 
Roman. The religious feeling which Virgil preserved 
in his own heart is made the more conspicuous, when we 
remember amidst what almost overpowering difficulties 
it was that he preserved it. It was not only that, in 
the words of Dante, " he lived at Rome under the good 
Augustus in the time of the false and lying gods," 
but he lived at a time when the traditional faith in 
these gods was dead among almost all educated men. 
As has been lately said, " The old religions were dead 
from the Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and 
the Nile, and the principles on which human society 
had been constructed were dead also. There remained 
of spiritual conviction only the common and human 
sense of justice and morality ; and out of this sense 
some ordered system of government had to be con- 
structed, under which men could live and labor, and 



VIRGIL AS A, RELIGIOUS POET. 141 

eat the fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this 
material kind there can be no enthusiasm, no chivalry, 
no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the heroic type." 
But such was the rule of the Caesars — "a kingdom 
where men could work, think, and speak as they pleased, 
and travel freely among provinces for the most part 
ruled by Gallios, who protected life and property," and 
who cared for nothing else. This was the world into 
which Virgil was born, and it is his unique merit that 
he in some way maintained within himself a sense of 
poetry, faith, and devoutness in a time when, if these 
things were slumbering in the heart of humanity, they 
were nowhere else apparent. 

A man of his spirit must have felt himself lonely 
enough among the literary men and statesmen whom 
he met at Rome. Many a secret longing of heart he 
must have had, for which among them he could find 
no sympathy. They had ceased to believe in anything 
divine, probably mocked and ridiculed it. But, what- 
ever else he might have done, a devout soul like Virgil 
could never do this. A severe and peculiar kind of 
trial it is for such a spirit to be born into an age, when 
the old forms of religion, which have sustained former 
generations, are waxing old and ready to perish. We 
can imagine that Virgil himself must have felt that 
those old beliefs had no longer the strength they once 
had ; but his innate modesty and reverence, his love for 
antiquity and for the scenes of his childhood, his imag- 
inative sympathy, would not suffer him to treat them 
rudely, but would make him cling to them and make the 
best of them. In fact, at such a time there are always 
a few select spirits in whom the inner religious life is 
sustained by its own strength, or, if fed at all from 



142 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

without, it is fed from sources of which it is unconscious. 
Instead of deriving nutriment from the old beliefs, it 
imparts to them from within whatever vitality they still 
retain. Such we can imagine Virgil to have been. Men 
of his kind, who still believe that, whatever some scoff- 
ers may say, there is " a higher life than this daily one, 
and a brighter world than that we see," if they fall 
among a set of acute dialecticians, are often sore bestead 
to give a reason for the faith that is still in them. If 
Virgil had been an interlocutor in Cicero's dialogue De 
Natura Deorum, he would probably have cut but a 
sorry figure against the arguments of Cotta and the 
sneers of Velleius, and certainly could not have tabled 
any so clear-cut theory as Stoic Balbus did. . But it is 
just the very beauty of such spirits, that all the irref- 
ragable arguments and demonstrations of the acutest 
logicians cannot drive them out of their essential faith 
in the supernatural and the divine. 

Mr. Sellar has truly said that Virgil has failed to 
produce a consistent picture of spiritual life out of the 
various elements, the popular, mystical, and philosoph- 
ical modes of thought, which he strove to combine into 
a single representation. This may be at once conceded. 
How could he or any one produce harmony out of ele- 
ments so discordant as those which his age supplied ? 
But nevertheless, inconsistent, irreconcilable, as these 
elements are, when they have passed through Virgil's 
mind one spirit pervades them all. Everywhere we see 
that the touch of his fine and reverent spirit tends to 
extract from them a moral, if it cannot reduce them 
into an intellectual harmony. 

What were the elements out of which the very com- 
posite Virgilian theology was woven ? First, there was 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 143 

his native love for the old rustic gods whom in his boy- 
hood he had seen worshipped by the Mantuan husband- 
men — Faunus and Picus, Janus and Pilumnus, and the 
like — 

" Ye gods and goddesses all ! whose care is to protect the fields." 

His first impressions were of the country and of coun- 
try people, and these Virgil was not worldly enough to 
forget amid the life of the city, and the friendship of 
the great. His imagination ever reverted to Mincio's 
side, and his heart clung with peculiar tenacity to the 
recollections of that early time. And therefore we find 
that, both in the Georgics and in the JEneid, he dwells 
on the old rustic worships and the local divinities with 
something more than a mere antiquarian attachment. 
To those primeval traditions, those old-world beliefs 
and practices, he adhered, as to his earliest and surest 
ground of trust. He felt that to eradicate these would 
be to tear up some of the deepest roots of his spiritual 
life. Therefore he retained them fondly, and did his 
best to reconcile them with the beliefs which his later 
culture superinduced. 

The second element in Virgil's Pantheon was the 
Olympian dynasty of gods, with which the influx of 
Greek literature had saturated the whole educated 
thought and imagination of Rome. Indeed, the litera- 
ture of his day would not have allowed him to reject 
this poetic theology. At first sight it might seem that 
the Olympian gods had come to Virgil pure and unal- 
loyed from Homer. But, when we look more closely, 
there is a deep change. Outwardly they may appear 
the same, but inwardly the modern spirit has reached 
and modified them.. Virgil introduces his gods far more 
sparingly than Homer ; they interfere far less with the 



144 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

affairs of men. When they do interfere, it is in a gentler 
and humaner spirit. It is with pity that they look upon 
men slaughtering each other. When Trojans and Ru- 
tulians are hewing each other down, and " the gods in 
Jove's palace look pityingly on the idle rage of the war- 
ring hosts," their feeling is — 

"Alas that death-doomed men should suffer so terribly! " 
Again, Virgil's Jove is more just and impartial than 
Homer's. When Turnus and .ZEneas contend, he holds 
the balance with perfect evenness: — 

"Jupiter himself holds aloft his scales, poised and level, and lays 

therein 
The destinies of the two, to see whom the struggle dooms, and 

whose 
The weight that death bears down." 

When Virgil's gods meet in council, their deliberations 
are more dignified ; there is less of the debating agora 
in their proceedings. Jupiter addresses them with a 
quite Roman majesty ; indeed, approaches more nearly 
to a real king of the gods. Monotheism has evidently 
colored Virgil's conception of him. Venus appears no 
longer as the voluptuous beguiler, but rather as the 
mother trembling for her son. 

If Virgil cannot altogether hide the follies and vices 
of the gods which mythology had given to his hands, 
he does his best to throw a veil over them. If Juno's 
wrath must still burn implacably, Virgil has for it the 
well-known cry of surprise — 

" Can heavenly natures hate so fiercely ? " 
Thus we see that if the Homeric forms and even some 
of the strange doings of the old .gods are still retained, 
the best ideas and scruples of Virgil's own age enter in 
to inform, to modify, and to moralize them. 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 145 

But, beside the primeval Italian traditions and the 
Olympian gods, there were probably other extraneous 
elements, which entered into Virgil's very composite 
theology. Something, perhaps, he may have gathered 
from the teaching of the Eleusinian or other mysteries ; 
but of this we know too little to speak with any certainty. 
Some tincture of Oriental worships, too, is indicated by 
his mention of the Phrygian goddess Cybele. 

Perhaps nowhere in Virgil is the strange medley of 
faiths forced more disturbingly on our view than in the 
invocation to the first Georgic. When we read that 
opening passage, in which Liber and Ceres, Fauni and 
Dryades, Neptune, producer of the horse ; Aristaus, 
feeder of kine ; Pan, keeper of sheep ; Minerva, dis- 
coverer of the olive ; Triptolemus, the Attic inventor of 
the plough ; Silvanus, planter of trees — are all jumbled 
together, we scarce know what to think of it. When 
finally Caesar is invoked as a deity — Virgil doubts 
whether of earth, sky, or sea ; surely not of Tartarus, 
for he would not wish to reign there — we are sorely 
puzzled, whether we are to regard the whole passage as 
fictitious and unreal, or as representing a state of belief 
not impossible to an imaginative mind in Virgil's day, 
though by us wholly inconceivable. As Mr. Sellar has 
well said, " it is impossible to find any principle of rec- 
oncilement " for such multifarious elements. " Probably 
not even the poets themselves, least of all Virgil, could 
have given an explanation of their real state of mind " 
in composing such a passage. " So far as we can attach 
any truthful meaning to this invocation, we must look 
upon it as a symbolical expression of divine agency and 
superintendence in all the various fields of natural pro- 
duction." Just so. To a reverent mind like Virgil's, un- 
10 



146 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

willing to break with the past, yet accessible to all influ- 
ences of the present, it may well have been that these 
multifarious relics of a fading polytheism expressed only 
the various functions, attributes, or agencies through 
which worked that Supreme Will, that one Pronoia in 
which his deeper mind really believed. Something of 
the same kind is seen in mediaeval belief, when the prac- 
tical faith in elaborate and active angelic hierarchies 
may have interfered with, though it did not supersede, 
the true faith in the Divine Unity. 

If in the time of Augustus the majority of educated 
men believed nothing, those religious minds, to whom, 
as to Virgil, belief was a necessity, were more and more 
driven towards a monotheistic faith, towards the belief 
that the essential Being underlying the many forms of 
religion was One. The whole progress of the world, 
practical and social, as well as speculative, tended this 
way. Of intellectual influences making in this direc- 
tion, the most powerful was Greek philosophy, whether 
in the shape of Stoicism or of Platonism. Every great 
poet takes in deeply the philosophy of his time, and 
certainly Virgil was no exception. Of the three forms 
of philosophy then current at Rome, the Stoic, the 
Platonic, and the Epicurean, Virgil began with the last. 
At Rome he studied under Siron, the Epicurean, and 
had been profoundly impressed by the great poem of 
his predecessor, Lucretius, which had expounded so 
powerfully to the Roman world the Epicurean tenets. 
For a time he was held charmed by this philosophy ; 
but there were in Virgil's devout and affectionate nat- 
ure longings which it could not satisfy. When he wrote 
his Eclogues he may have been a disciple of Epicurus ; 
but in the Georgics we see that, if he still retained the 



VIRGTL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 147 

physical views of that sect, he had bidden good-by to 
their moral and religious teaching. Every one remem- 
bers the passage in the second Georgic in which Virgil 
contrasts the task he had set before himself with the 
large aim which Lucretius had in view. While accord- 
ing no stinted admiration to the great attempt of Lu- 
cretius to lay bare Nature's inner mysteries, he says 
that he has chosen a humbler path. The import of this 
passage may be, as the French critic interprets it, to let 
us know that, after having sounded his own nature, 
Virgil had found that he was not fitted to persevere in 
those violent speculations, which had at first seduced 
his imagination, and that he had decided to abide by the 
majority, and to share their beliefs ; yet not without 
casting a look of envy and regret at those more daring 
spirits, who were able to dwell without fear in the calm 
cold heights of science. 

Perhaps another interpretation may be given to this 
famous passage, which evidently describes a crisis in 
Virgil's mental life, as well as in the direction of his 
poetry. After having been fascinated for a time by the 
seeming grandeur of the Lucretian view of things, he 
came to a crucial question which meets all thoughtful 
men in modern as well as in ancient times. He had to 
ask himself, In what way am I to think of this world ; 
how am I to interpret it? From which side shall I 
approach it ? Shall I think of its central force, its ruling 
power, under the medium of nature or under that of 
man ? We cannot conceive it barely, absolutely, color- 
lessly : we must think it under some medium, and these 
are the only two media possible to ns. Between the 
two we must make our choice. If we take nature for 
our medium, we see through it vastness, machinery, 



148 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

motion, order, growth, decay. And the contemplation 
of these things may lead us to think of -some great 
central power, whence all these proceed. Centrality, or- 
ganization, power, — these are the results which mere 
nature yields. And if we cannot rest in mere abstrac- 
tions, we may pass from these to the thought of a Being, 
who is the spring of all this machinery, the central power 
of these vast movements, the arranger of these harmo- 
nies. Beyond this, by the aid of mere nature, we cannot 
get. The central power we thus arrive at is characterless, 
unmoral. Out of nature we can get no morality. "Nat- 
ure is an unmoral medium." And this is very much all 
that Lucretius got to, and all that any ever will get to, 
who start from his point of view and adopt his method. 
But take the other medium : start from man — from 
wnat is highest and best in him, his moral nature, his 
moral affections ; make man with these moral affections, 
which are his proper humanity, our medium, and we 
are led to a very different result. Interpreting the world 
and its central power through this medium, we are led 
not to a mere abstraction, but to think of that ruling 
Power as a personal and moral Being. That which is 
chief, highest, central in the universe, cannot possibly be 
lower than that which is best in man. Using whatever 
is deepest and best in ourselves as the window through 
which we look out to what is highest in the universe, in 
this way alone can we see somewhat into the divine 
character. This, it may be said, is anthropomorphism ; 
and that is a big word which scares many. But there is 
an anthropomorphism which is true, the only true the- 
ology — when we refer to God all those moral qualities, 
— righteous love, righteous hatred, mercy, truth, — of 
which there are some faint traces in ourselves. High 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 149 

humanity, then, is our guide to God. There is no other 
medium through which we can see Him as a moral be- 
ing. Of the two methods, the " physical view," as has 
been said, " reduces God to a mechanical principle, the 
human and moral view raises him into a person and a 
character." The day may come when these two may 
coalesce and be seen in perfect harmony. But that day 
is not yet. Till it comes we shall cling to that which is 
deepest, most essential, and must always be paramount, 
and regard man's moral nature as the truest key to 
the interpretation of the universe — as our access to the 
divine nature. 

It is not, of course, meant that Virgil consciously went 
through any such process of reasoning as this. But he 
may have been led by half-conscious thoughts, akin to 
these, to renounce the Lucretian philosophy, and to at- 
tach himself to that humble^ more human mode of 
thought, which breathes through all his poetry. Not 
but that he once and again reverts in his poems to philo- 
sophic speculations. In the song of Silenus, in the sixth 
Eclogue, he gives us a piece of the Lucretian cosmogony. 
In the fourth Georgic, when speaking of the wisdom of 
the bees, he alludes with evident sympathy to the the- 
ory, whether learnt from Pythagoras, or Plato, or the 
Stoics, that all creation, animate and inanimate, is in- 
spired by the breath of one universal soul. To this 
theory he again returns in the sixth book of the JEneid, 
where Anchises in Elysium expounds it still more ear- 
nestly. Yet it is characteristic of Virgil's happy incon- 
sistency, that his pantheism, if he really did in some 
sense hold it, had not any of the results it frequently has 
in more consecutive thinkers. It did not in the least 
obliterate for him moral distinctions, or make him at all 



150 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

less sensitive to the everlasting difference between right 
and wrong. This is at once apparent in the whole sen- 
timent of the Georgics. 

That greatest. of didactic poems is Virgil's tribute to 
his love of Italian scenery, and to his interest in Italian 
rustics, among whom he had spent his childhood and 
youth. I cannot now even glance at the many and 
great beauties of the poem, and at the wonderful way in 
which, as all travellers testify, it conveys the feeling of 
the Italian landscape. A young poet, while lately vis- 
iting the neighborhood of Mantua, has well expressed 
this : — 

" O sweetest singer! stateliest head, 

And gentlest, ever crowned with bay, 
It seemed that from the holy dead 

Thy soul came near to mine to-day ; 

"And all fair places to my view 

Seemed fairer; — such delight I had, 
To deem that these thy presence knew, 
And at thy coming oft were glad." 

But it is not of this, but of the religious sentiment 
which pervades the Georgics, that I have now to speak. 
It is seen not only in that Virgil exhorts the husband- 
men to piety — 

"First of all worship the gods " — 

and throws himself, as far as he can, into the rustic's 
reverence for Ceres and other rural deities. This he 
does. But his religious feeling shows itself in a more 
genuine and unconventional way. 

Virgil's whole view of the relation of man to nature 
is in marked contrast to that of Lucretius. He felt, as 
strongly as Lucretius did, that the country is no mere 
Arcadian paradise ; that nature, if a nurse at all, is a 
rough and wayward one — often seems to fight against 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 151 

man — is traversed by what seem to us inherent defects 
and imperfections. Looking on these, Lucretius had 
maintained that a work, which was so defective, could 
not be divine: — 

" This universe has by no means been fashioned for us by divine 
Wisdom — with so deep a flaw it stands endowed." 

And among the defects he enumerates many features — 
mountains, seas, the arctic and the torrid zones, and 
other things, which we now know to be really blessings. 
Virgil saw and recognized the seeming defects, acknowl- 
edges them not less feelingly, but interprets them in a 
different way. He saw that one end of their existence 
was to discipline man, to draw out in him the hardy and 
self-denying virtues, and that, if man so accepted them, 
they turned to his good. 

" The great sire himself would not have the path of tillage 
To be a smooth one, and first disturbed the fields 
By the husbandman's art, and whetted human wit by many a care, 
Nor suffered heavy sloth to waste his realm." 

He regards the husbandman's lot as one full of often 
thankless toil, of suffering and disappointment. The 
first days of life are the best : 

"Poor mortals that we are, all the best days of life are the first 
To fly — come on apace diseases and the gloom of age, and suffering 
Sweeps us off, and the unrelenting cruelty of death." 

And again in such words as 

"All things are destined to hurry towards decay," 
there is a tone of deep sadness, bordering on despond- 
ency ; but yet this does not engender in Virgil unbelief 
or despair, much less anger or revolt. Rather, in view 
of these acknowledged hardships and evils, he counsels 
fortitude, patience, watchfulness, self-restraint, reverence. 
In Virgil's sadness there is no bitterness, but rather a 



152 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

sweet pensiveness, which looks to be comforted. His 
advice to the husbandman sums itself up into the me- 
diaeval motto, " Ora et labora." For nature is not, any- 
more than man, independent. Both are under the con- 
trol of a heavenly power, a supreme will ; and this will 
ordains that man should by patient toil subdue reluctant 
nature, and in doing so should find not his sustenance 
only, but his happiness and peace. 

In fine, with regard to the religious sentiment of the 
Georgics, Mr. Sellar thinks that Virgil's faith is purer 
and happier than that of Hesiod, because it is " trust in 
a just and beneficent Father, rather than fear of a jeal- 
ous taskmaster. But he thinks it less noble than the 
faith of iEschylus and Sophocles, because it is " a pas- 
sive yielding to the longing of the human heart and to 
esthetic emotion, rather than that union of natural piety 
with insight into the mystery of life" which charac- 
terizes the religion of the two great dramatists. With- 
out attempting now to discuss this contrast which Mr. 
Sellar has drawn, I leave it to the reflections of my 
readers. 

As the Georgics are the poem of Italy, so the JEneid 
is the poem of Rome — the epic of the Empire. Patri- 
otism is its keynote, its inspiring motive : pride in the 
past history of Rome, her present prosperity, her future 
destiny — all these, strangely interwoven with the for- 
tunes of the Julian House. Yet along with this motive, 
behind it, in harmony with it, there moves a great back- 
ground of religious sentiment, so powerful and omni- 
present that the JEneid may be called a great religious 
epic. 

In Virgil, however it may have been with other 
Romans, the sense of universal empire, and the belief 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 153 

in the eternal existence of Rome, were not founded on 
presumption. These things were guaranteed to her by 
her divine origin, and by the continual presence of an 
overruling destiny — a Fortuna urbis, Fatum, or Fata, 
whose behests it was Rome's mission to fulfil. This 
Fatum was something different from Jupiter. But 
" Jupiter Capitolinus in ancient, the living emperor in 
later times, were its visible vicegerents." This mys- 
terious power which ruled the destiny of Rome was 
neither a personal nor a purely moral power. But in 
Virgil's view it assumed a beneficent aspect, just as with 
him the mission of Rome was not merely to conquer 
the world and rule it, but to bring in law and peace, 
and to put an end to war — "pacisque imponere mo- 
rem." 

Another religious aspect of the JEneid is seen, as the 
French critic 1 has remarked, in the view taken of the 
mission entrusted to JEneas. It was not to conquer 
Italy, but to find there a home and refuge for the out- 
cast deities and penates of Troy. This runs through 
the poem from end to end. It is seen in the opening 
lines of it. It is seen in the words which Hector's 
ghost addresses to JEneas : — 

" Troy intrusts to thee now her worship and her gods. Take them 
To share your destiny — seek for them a mighty city." 

It is seen at the close, in the words of iEneas him- 
self : — 

" I will ordain sacred rites and divinities; let my father-in-law 
Latinus hold to the rule of war." 

The Romans would never have tolerated to hear that 

their ancestors, Latin and Sabine, of whom they were 

60 proud, were conquered by Phrygians, whom they 

1 G. Boissier, La Religion Romaine. 



154 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

despised. But the East they looked on as the land 
of mystery, the birthplace of religion, and they were 
not unwilling to receive thence their first lessons in 
tilings divine. It is as the bearer of the Trojan gods 
to Italy that iEneas appears, from first to last. This 
is his main function ; and, this achieved, his mission is 
ended, his work done. At the close of the poem, when 
all difficulties are to be smoothed away, the last of 
these, Juno's vindictiveness, is appeased when she is 
told by Jupiter that her favorite Italians were to be un- 
removed, their place and name preserved ; the Trojans 
were only to hand on to them their worship and their 
name, and then to disappear. 

" The Ausonians shall keep their native tongue, their native customs: 
The name shall remain as it is. The Teucrians shall merge in the 

nation they join — 
That and no more ; their rites and worship shall be my gift; 
All shall be Latins and speak the Latin tongue." 

{JSneid, xii. 834.) 

This view of the mission of .ZEneas as essentially a 
religious one throws, I think, some light on his char- 
acter as Virgil portrays it. That character, as we all 
know, has generally been thought uninteresting, not to 
say insipid. Every one has felt the contrast between 
him and the hero of the Iliad, or even such subordi- 
nate characters as Ulysses, Hector, Ajax, and Nestor. 
These are living men, full of like passions with our- 
selves, only of more heroic mould. The glow of health 
is in their cheek, the strong throb is in their pulses. 
Beside them, how pale, washed-out, is the countenance 
of JEneas ! He is no doubt, in some sort, a composite 
conception — an attempt to embody somewhat diverse 
attributes, rather than a man moved by one strong 
human impulse. On one side iEneas represents that 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 155 

latest product of civilization, the humane man, in whom 
is embodied " humanitas," as Cicero and Yirgil con- 
ceived it. On another side, some of his traits are taken 
from Augustus and meant to recall him. These two 
elements are both present. But far more potent than 
either is the conception of him as the man of destiny, 
whom the fates had called to go forth, he knows not 
whither, and to seek in some strange land, which the 
fates would show him, a home for his country's gods 
and for himself ; a sad, contemplative man, to whom 
the present is nothing, who ever feels that he has a 
mournful past behind him, and a great destiny before 
him. He has no strong impulses of his own ; natural 
interests have ceased to move him : 

" In him the savage virtues of the race, 
Revenge and all ferocious thoughts, are dead." 

As the French critic has well expressed it, " He has 
secured from heaven a mission which lies heavy on 
him ; and he accepts it pensively. He toils and en- 
dures hardness, to find a resting-place for his penates, a 
kingdom for his son, a glorious future for his race. Be- 
fore these great interests his own personality has effaced 
itself. He obeys the behest of fate in spite of natural 
reluctance, and sacrifices himself to the commands of 
heaven." Herein lies the "pietas" which Yirgil has 
made his fixed characteristic. The chief motive-power 
within him is piety in its widest sense, including all 
human affections — love to family, love to country, 
fidelity to the dead; above all, that dependence on a 
higher power, and that obedience to it, which controls 
and sanctifies all his actions. To meet these duties, to 
fulfil the destiny he is called to, is his one absorbing 
thought. He has no other. 



156 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

Even that part of his conduct which to moderns 
seems most unforgivable, his heartless desertion of Dido, 
is explained by this principle, though it is not justified. 
JEneas deserts her not from heartlessness, but in obe- 
dience to an overmastering call from Heaven. What- 
ever his attachment may have been, one word brought 
by Mercury from Jupiter suffices to startle him from 
his dream. At the god's approach — 

"Art thou not helping to build the walls of lofty Carthage, 
And in the fondness of weak affection piling up a fair city ! " 

he at once awakes and longs to be gone. 

" He is on fire to fly, and leave the too-well-loved city, 
Astounded at so unlooked-for a warning, and at the command of 
the gods." 

Hence we see why the character of iEneas, as por- 
trayed in the first six books of the ^EJneid, is so much 
more consistent than it appears to be in the last six. 
In the former he is entirely the absorbed, devoted man 
obeying the behests of Heaven. In the latter he has 
to do the fighting business, to play the part of Achilles 
or Ajax. When we see him lopping off the heads 
of the Rutulians, we feel that this is not in keeping 
with the original conception of him. His bearing be- 
comes unnatural, his words truculent, altogether unlike 
those of the humane, pensive, contemplative man of the 
earlier books. But it could not be avoided : the plan 
of the poem required that he should be the warrior as 
well as the religious exile; as the warrior, he had 
bloody work to do, and in describing this Virgil could 
not be original, but must needs fall back on imitation 
of the Had and of the Homeric heroes. 

If we cannot get over an impression of baseness 
in his conduct, to the Carthaginian queen, we should 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 157 

remember that in Virgil's intention this but proves 

the greatness of his self-sacrifice, and the depth of his 

conviction, that Heaven had called him to another 

destiny. Had his abandonment of Dido been his own 

deed it would have been the basest treachery. As it 

is, that action, though not admirable, is changed in 

character, when we see it as done at the behest of 

Heaven, as an act of religious obedience. 

" Cease to inflame by your complaints both yourself and me ; 
It is not by my choice I am pursuing Italy." 

It makes him, no doubt, less interesting as a man, 
but it proves more entirely that he is a religious hero 
inspired by the sense of a divine mission. This was 
the poet's fundamental conception of him ; it was thus 
he wished to represent him. Unless we continually re- 
member this, we shall not only misinterpret iEneas in 
his conduct to Dido, but we shall miss the key to his 
whole character, and to the main purpose of the poem. 
It has often been remarked how much more attractive 
is the character of Turnus than that of iEneas. Turnus 
and his comrades represent the natural passions, the 
spontaneous impulses, in a much freer, more human 
way, than iEneas and his Trojans. The individuality 
of these last is, as it were, obliterated by the weight 
of destiny which they feel laid upon them. What is 
this but to say that in poetry or romance it is much 
easier to invest with interest an ordinary man, with 
all the human feelings and infirmities about him, than 
to portray a religious hero in such wise that, while 
he commands our reverence, he shall win our affection ? 
If Virgil has failed to do so, and I grant that he has 
failed, who is there of poets or novelists that in this 
kind of portraiture has entirely succeeded ? 



158 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

But more thanjn any other portion of his work, the 
strength of Virgil's moral and religious feeling comes 
out in the sixth book of the uiEneid. His whole con- 
ception of the condition of the departed souls is a thor- 
oughly moral one — a projection into the unseen future 
of the everlasting difference between good and evil. 
That which lies at the bottom of all the elaborate im- 
agery of the book is the belief that judgment awaits 
men there for what they have been, and what they have 
done here ; that their works follow them into the un- 
seen state ; that the pollution which men have con- 
tracted here must be purged away before they can at- 
tain t6 peace. To show in detail how these conceptions 
pervade that sixth book would require a whole essay 
devoted to itself, and I cannot do more than allude to 
it now. 

It is not, however, the definite teaching either of the 
sixth, or of any other book of the ^neid, that most 
clearly reveals the essential piety of Virgil's soul. It is 
the incidental expressions, the half-uttered thoughts, the 
sighs which escape him unawares, that show what his 
habitual feeling about man's life and destiny was — how 
solemn, how tender, how religious ! 

Consider the great purity of his mind as seen in his 
poems. One or two passages only occur in all his 
works from which the most perfect modesty would 
shrink. And this in an age when many of the great 
men of the day were steeped to the lips in impurity. 
When we first become acquainted with Virgil in boy- 
hood, we are not, of course, aware of this characteristic. 
It requires larger acquaintance with literature and with 
the world to make us feel how great is the contrast, in 
this respect, between Virgil and most of the ancient, 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 159 

and indeed many of the modern, poets. Horace, who 
lived much in society, was conscious of the rare beauty 
of Virgil's character, and speaks of him as one of the 
whitest souls among the sons of men. Indeed, Horace 
never alludes to Virgil, but his voice hushes itself into 
a tone of tender reverence unusual with him. 

Again, observe how, though Virgil is compelled to 
speak of war and bloodshed, his soul evidently abhors 
it. We see this in such lines as 

" The fever of the steel, the guilty madness of battle 
Rages within him." 

Again — 

" By degrees crept in an age degenerate and of duller hue, 
And the frenzy for war and the greed of gain." 

This sounds strange language from the lips of the great 
poet of the conquerors of the world, but it was the true 
language of Virgil's own heart, though not of his peo- 
ple's. Keble has remarked how from the thick of bat- 
tle and slaughter he turns away to soothe himself with 
rustic images, as in the description of the conflicts of 
-ZEneas in the tenth book of the ^Eneid. Every death 
is described, not with stern delight, but with a sigh, as 
of one who felt for the miseries of men. As each war- 
rior falls, Virgil turns aside to recall his home, his fam- 
ily, his peaceful pursuits, as in the well-known — 
"And he dreams in death of his darling Argos." 
Note, too, Virgil's unworldliness of spirit. He had 
evidently no relish for the material splendors that fas- 
cinate lower natures. It would seem as if unworldli- 
ness were the very condition of all high poetry, and as 
if a great poet's heart could not be given to those things 
which the worldling admires. But no one of ancient, 
and few of modern, poets have shown so decidedly that 



160 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

riches, rank, splendor, have no charm for them. Ho- 
mer, himself probably a poor man, in his simplicity, 
looks with evident satisfaction on the riches of the great. 
Andromache is " rich in gifts ; " Homer's iEneas boasts 
that his ancestor was " the wealthiest of mortal men." 

For Virgil 

" the high mansion with proud portals, 
Discharging from all the palace its huge tide of early visitants," 

has no attraction. From the palace of Augustus, and 
from the home of Maecenas on the Esquiline, he turns 
away instinctively to the woods and the fields, and to 
the men who lived among them. The country house- 
wife going about her work pleases him more than the 
grandest of patrician matrons. Observe his picture, in 
the eighth book of the ^Jneid, of the thrifty housewife ; 
how at the mid-hour of the night, " compelled to sup- 
port life by spinning, she wakes to light the fire that 
slumbered in the embers, adding night to her day's 
work, and keeps her handmaids laboring long by the 
blaze, all that she may be able to preserve her wedded 
life in purity, to bring up her infant sons." Evidently 
this was more to his mind than all the Tyrian purple 
and fretted ceilings of Roman mansions. 

Connected with this unworldliness is Virgil's contin- 
ual remembrance of the poor, and his feeling for the 
miserable. This he has expressed in one immortal line : 

" Tears there are for human things, 
And hearts are touched by mortal sufferings " — 

this is the spirit of all his poetry. If men forget or 
despise the unfortunate, he is sure that Heaven does 
not : — 

" If you defy the race of men, and the weapons that mortals wield, 
Yet look to have to do with the gods, who forget not right and 
wrong." 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 161 

No poet ever less admired mere outward success, and 
felt more sure that there is a tribunal somewhere which 
will test men and things by another standard, according 
to which 

"a noble aim 
Faithfully kept is as a noble deed 
In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed." 

You remember his 

" Learn, boy! from me what virtue means and genuine toil. 
Let others teach you the meaning of success." 

While gentleness and natural piety are Virgil's char- 
acteristic virtues, hardly less prized by him is another 
virtue which might seem opposed to these ; I mean pa- 
tience, fortitude, manly endurance. 

' Whate'er betide, every misfortune must be overcome by enduring 
it" — 

this is the undertone of all his morality. 

Again, another side of his unworldliness appears in 
this, that his heart refuses to find full satisfaction in any- 
thing here. Not wealth, not honor, not future fame, 
not the loveliness of nature, not the voice of friend, are 
enough for him. For, even if for a time they pleased, 
does he not keenly feel that 

" Poor mortals that we are, our brightest days of life 
Are ever the first to fly " '? 

This has been called pessimism in Virgil. It is, how- 
ever, only his keen feeling of the transitory and un- 
sufficing nature of all earthly things. He does not rail 
at it, as some poets have done ; he upbraids neither the 
world nor the power that made it, but accepts it and 
learns from it reverent patience. And this experience 
would seem to have wakened within him a longing and 
aspiration after something purer, higher, lovelier, than 
11 



162 VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 

anything which earth contains. His poetry has the 
tone as of one who, in his own words, 

" Was stretching forth his hands with longing desire for the farther 

shore." 

Therefore, while we may not accept, as former ages did, 
the fourth Eclogue as in any sense a prophecy of the 
Messiah, we need not be blind to that which it does con- 
tain — the hope of better things, the expectation that 
some relief was at hand for the miseries of an outworn 
and distracted world. This expectation was, we know, 
widely spread in Yirgil's day, and probably none felt it 
more than he. Likely enough he expected that the re- 
lief would come from the establishment and universal 
sway of Roman Dominion ; but the ideal empire, as he 
conceived it, was something more humane and benefi- 
cent than anything earth had yet seen — something 
such as Trajan may perhaps have dreamed of, but 
which none ever saw realized. His conception of the 
future work, which he imagined the Empire had to do, 
contained elements which belonged to a kingdom not of 
this world. Of his enthusiastic predictions regarding 
it, we may say, in Keble's words, 

"Thoughts beyond their thought to those high hards were given." 
Taking, then, all these qualities of Virgil together, 
his purity, his unworldliness, his tenderness towards the 
weak and down-trodden, his weariness of the state of 
things he saw around him, his lofty ideal, his longing 
for a higher life — in him it may be said that the an- 
cient civilization reached its moral culmination. Here 
was, as least, one spirit, " who lived and died in faith," 
and kept himself unspotted from the world. It was this 
feeling about Virgil, probably, which gave rise to the 
legend, that St. Paul on his journey to Rome turned 



VIRGIL AS A RELIGIOUS POET. 163 

aside to visit the poet's tomb near Naples, aDd that, 
weeping over it, he exclaimed — 

" What a man would I have made of thee, 
Had I found thee alive, 
greatest of the poets ! " 

In the words of the old Latin hymn — 

" Ad Maronis Mausoleum 
Ductus, fudit super eum 

Piae roreru lacrymae ; 
Quern te, inquit, reddidissem, 
Si te vivum invenissem, 

Poetarum maxime ! " 



CHAPTER VII. 

SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

Lyrical poetry is poetry in its intensest and purest 
form. Other kinds of poetry may be greater, more in- 
tellectual, — may combine elements more numerous and 
diverse, and demand more varied powers for their pro- 
duction ; but no other kind contains within the same 
compass so much of the true poetic ore, of that simple 
and vivid essence which to all true poetry is the breath 
of life. 

For what is it that is the primal source, the earliest 
impulse, out of which all true poetry in the past has 
sprung, out of which alone it ever can spring ? Is it 
not the descent upon the soul, or the flashing up from 
its inmost depths, of some thought, sentiment, emotion, 
which possesses, fills, kindles it — as we say, inspires it? 
It may be some new truth, which the poet has been 
the first to discern. It may be some world-old truth, 
borne in upon him so vividly, that he seems to have been 
the first man who has ever seen it. New to him, a new 
dawn, as it were, from within, the light of it makes all 
it touches new. In remote times, before poetry had 
worn itself into conventional grooves, it was only some 
impulse torrent-strong, some fountain of thought burst- 
ing from the deepest and freshest places of the soul, that 
could cleave for itself channels of utterance. In later 
times, when a poetic language had been framed, poetic 
forms stereotyped, and poetry had become an art, or 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 165 

even a literary trade, a far feebler impulse might bor- 
row these forms, and express itself poetically. But 
originally it was not so. In primitive times, as Ewald 
says, it was only the marvellous overmastering power, 
the irresistible impulse of some new and creative 
thought, which, descending upon a man, could become 
within him the spirit and impelling force of poetry. 

To our modern ears all this sounds unreal, — a thing 
you read of in aesthetic books, but never meet with in 
actual life. Our civilization, with its stereotyped ways 
and smooth conventionalities, has done so much to re- 
press strong feeling ; above all, English reserve so per- 
emptorily forbids all exhibition of it, even when most 
genuine, that, if any are visited by it, they must learn 
to keep it to themselves, and be content to know " the 
lonely rapture of lonely minds." And yet even in this 
century of ours such things have been possible. 

A modern poet, whose own experience and produc- 
tions exemplified his words, has said, u A man cannot 
say, I will write poetry ; the greatest poet cannot say 
it, for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which 
some irresistible influence, like an inconstant wind, 
awakens to transitory brightness. This power arises 
from within, like the color of a flower which dims and 
changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of 
our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or of 
its departure. It is, as it were, the interpenetration of a 
diviner nature with our own ; but its footsteps are like 
those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm 
erases, and whose traces remain only on the wrinkled 
sand which paves it. Poetry is the record of the best 
and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds." 

This, if in a measure true of all poetry, is especially 



166 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

descriptive of lyrical poetry. The thought, sentiment, 
situation, which shall lay hold of the soul with such 
intense force and rise to the highest elevation, must be 
single, solitary. Other thoughts may attach themselves 
to the ruling one, and contribute to body it forth, but 
these are merely accessory and subordinate. One rul- 
ing thought, one absorbing emotion there must be, if 
the mind is to be kindled and concentrated into its 
warmest glow. And what we call a lyric poem is the 
adequate and consummate expression of some such su- 
preme moment, of some one rapturous mood. Single 
we said the inspiring mood must be, — whole, unmin- 
gled, all-absorbing. When a mood of mind, a thought, 
a sentiment, or an emotion, or a situation, or an inci- 
dent, possessing these characters, has filled and over- 
mastered the singer's soul, then the vehicle most fitted 
to express it is the form of words which we call lyrical 
or musical. 

When and how the adequate utterances of the inward 
visitation comes is an interesting question, which, how- 
ever, need not detain us now. There may have been 
instances in which the poet, in the first flush of emotion, 
projected it into language perfect and complete. This, 
however, I should believe, is but rare, and only when 
the faculty of poetic utterance has been trained to the 
finest. Far more often, I should believe, a few burning 
words, a line here and there, have sprung to life in the 
first moment of excitement, and then have remained in 
the mind as the keynotes, till afterwards the propitious 
hour arrives which shall round off the whole thought 
into perfect language. Other instances there are in 
which the profound impressions have come and gone, 
and found no words at the time, but lain long dumb 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 167 

within, till, retouched in some happy moment by mem- 
ory and imagination, they have taken to themselves 
wings, and bodied themselves forever in language that 
renews all their original brightness. This it is of which 
Wordsworth speaks when he calls poetry " emotion re- 
membered in tranquillity." It is seen exemplified in his 
own best lyrics, many of which were no doubt born in 
this way ; preeminently is it seen in his master Ode On 
Intimations of Immortality. And if those moments of 
past fervor, seen through the atmosphere of memory, 
lose something of their first vividness, they win instead 
a pensive and spiritual light, which forms I know not 
how much of their charm. 

But however, and 'whenever, the one inspiring impulse 
finds words to embody it, one thing is certain, — that 
embodiment must be in language which has in it rhythm 
and melody. The expression must be musical, and for 
this reason. There is a strange kinship between inward 
fervor of emotion and outward melody of voice. When 
one overmastering impulse entirely fills the soul, there 
is a heaving of emotion within, which is in its nature 
rhythmical, — is indeed music, though unuttered music. 
And, when this passes outward into expression, it of 
necessity seeks to embody itself in some form of words 
which shall be musical, the outward melody of language 
answering to the already rhythmical and musical volume 
of feeling that is billowing within. We see this in the 
fact that, whenever any one is deeply moved, the ex- 
citement, passing outward, changes the tones of the 
voice, and makes them musical. Lyrical poetry is but 
the concentrating into regular form, and the carrying to 
higher power, of this natural tendency. 

To make the perfect lyric two things must conspire . 



168 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

an original emotion of more than usual depth, intensity, 
and tenderness, and a corresponding mastery over lan- 
guage to give it fitting utterance. The light that flashes 
up in the first creative moment must be so vivid and pen- 
etrating, as to fill and illumine every syllable of the lan- 
guage, as the light of the setting sun fills the cloud and 
transfigures it into its own brightness. When this depth 
and tenderness of susceptibility meets with perfect power 
of expression, we have the great lyric poems of the 
world. Such creations concentrate the largest amount 
of the true poetic essence into the smallest compass, and 
project it in the directest form, and with the most thrill- 
ing power, of which human language is capable. 

Lyric poems are in a special* way the creation of 
youth and the delight of age. Longer poems, the epic, 
the tragedy, demand more varied and maturer pow- 
ers, and have generally been composed by men who 
have reached middle life. The intense glow, the tu- 
multuous rush of feeling, which are the essence of the 
song, belong preeminently to youth, and can seldom in 
their first freshness be perpetuated even in those who 
have carried the boy's heart furthest into manhood, 
The wear and tear of life, and the continual sight of 
mortality pressing home, cool down the most ardent 
glow, and abate the strongest impulse. Hence it is 
that most of the greatest lyrists have done their pipings 
before forty ; many have ceased to sing even earlier. 
The songs or lyric poems composed in mature life 
are mainly such as those which Wordsworth speaks 
of, — products of emotion remembered in tranquillity. 
These no doubt have a charm of their own, in which 
the fervor of early feeling is tempered and mellowed by 
the ripeness of age. 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 169 

In the sequel I shall try to illustrate one of the many- 
possible kind of lyrics. There is an obvious division 
of lyrics suggested by a passage which I recently read 
in the Literary Studies of the late Mr. Walter Bage- 
hot. That very able man, who was long known chiefly 
as an original writer on political economy, seems to 
have been even more at home in the deep problems of 
metaphysics, and amid the fine shades of poetic feeling, 
than when discussing the doctrine of rent or of the 
currency. Speaking of lyric poetry, he says, " That 
species of art may be divided roughly into the human 
and the abstract. The sphere of the former is of course 
the actual life, passions, and actions of real men. In 
early ages there is no subject for art but natural life 
and primitive passion. At a later time, when, from the 
deposit of the debris of a hundred philosophies, a large 
number of half-personified abstractions are part of the 
familiar thoughts and language of all mankind, there 
are new objects to excite the feelings, — we might even 
say there are new feelings to be excited ; the rough sub- 
stance of original passion is sublimated and attenuated, 
till we hardly recognize its identity." Out of this last 
state of feeling comes the abstract, or, as I may call it, 
the intellectual lyric. I propose to dwell now on the 
former of these two kinds. 

There is a very general impression, especially in 
England, that Burns created Scottish song, and that 
all that is valuable in it is his work. Instead of saying 
that Burns created Scottish song, it would be more 
true to say that Scottish song created Burns, and 
that in him it culminated. He was born at a happy 
hour for a national singer, with a great background 
of song, centuries old, behind him, and breathing from 



170 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BUKNS. 

his childhood a very atmosphere of melody. From 
the earliest times the Scotch have been a song-loving 
people, meaning by song both the tunes, or airs, and 
the words. This is not the side which the Scotchman 
turns to the world, when he goes abroad into it to push 
his fortune. We all know the character that passes 
current as that of the typical Scot, — sandy-haired, 
hard-featured, clannish to his countrymen, unsympa- 
thetic to strangers, cautious, shrewd, self-seeking, self- 
reliant, persevering, difficult to drive a bargain with, 
impossible to circumvent. The last thing a stranger 
would credit him with would be the love of song. 
Yet when that hard, calculating trader has retired from 
the 'change or the market-place to his own fireside, 
the thing, perhaps, he loves best, almost as much as 
his dividends, will be those simple national melodies 
he has known from his childhood. Till a very recent 
time the whole air of Scotland, among the country 
people, was redolent of song. You heard the milkmaid 
singing some old chant, as she milked the cows in 
field or byre ; the housewife went about her work, 
or spun at her wheel, with a lilt upon her lips. You 
might hear in the Highland glen some solitary reaper, 
singing like her whom Wordsworth has immortalized ; 
in the Lowland harvest field, now one, now another, 
of the reapers taking up an old-world melody, till 
the whole band break out into some well-known chorus. 
The ploughman, too, in winter, as he turned over the 
green lea, beguiled the time by humming or whistling 
a tune ; even the weaver, as he clashed his shuttle 
between the threads, mellowed the harsh sound with 
a song. In former days song was the great amuse- 
ment of the peasantry, as they of a winter night 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 171 

met for a hamlet-gathering by each other's firesides. 
This was the usage in Scotland for centuries. Is it 
certain that the radical newspaper, which has super- 
seded it, is an improvement ? 

In general, it may be said that the airs or melodies 
are older than the words ; almost all the tunes have had 
at least two sets of words, an earlier and a later ; many 
of them have outlived more. There is much rather 
vague discussion as to the source from which the Scot- 
tish national tunes came. Some writers would refer 
them to the First James of Scotland, of whom we are 
told that he " invented a new, melancholy, and plaint- 
ive style of music, different from all others." Some 
would trace them to the old Celtic music, which has in- 
filtrated itself unawares from the Highlands into the 
Scottish Lowlands, and it cannot be doubted that to this 
source we owe some of our finest melodies. Others 
would make the Lowland music a Scandinavian rather 
than a Celtic immigration. Others, with not a little 
probability, have found a chief origin of it in the plain- 
song, Gregorian chants, or other sacred tunes of the 
mediaeval Church, still clinging to the hearts and memo- 
ries of the people, after they had been banished from 
the churches. Whatever may have been their origin, 
these old airs or melodies, which have been sung by so 
many generations, are full of character, and have a 
marked individuality of their own. They are simple, 
yet strong ; wild, yet sweet, answering wonderfully to 
the heart's primary emotions, lending themselves alike 
to sadness or gayety, to humor, drollery, or pathos, to 
manly independence and resolve, or to heart-broken 
lamentation. What musical peculiarities distinguish 
them I cannot say, knowing nothing of music but only 



172 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

the delight it gives. If any one cares to know what 
the chief characteristics of Scottish music are, I would 
refer him to a publication called The Thistle, which is 
now being brought out by Mr. Colin Brown, of Glas- 
gow. In that miscellany of Scottish song there is a 
disquisition on the nature of the national music, which 
seems to me to make the whole matter more plain and 
intelligible than any other of the treatises I have met 
with. But whatever may have been the origin, what- 
ever may be the characteristics, of the Scottish tunes or 
melodies, the thing to be remembered is that, in general, 
the musical airs are older than the words which we now 
have, and were in a great measure the inspirers of these 
words. 

About the poetry of the oldest songs, since I cannot 
analyze or describe the music, let me say a word or two. 
It is songs I speak of now, not ballads. For though 
these two terms are often used indiscriminately, I should 
wish to keep them distinct. A ballad is a poem which 
narrates an event in a simple style, noticing the several 
incidents of it successively as they occurred ; not in- 
dulging in sentiment or reflection, but conveying what- 
ever sentiment it has indirectly, by the way the facts 
are told, rather than by direct expression. A song, on 
the other hand, contains little or no narrative, tells no 
facts, or gives, by allusion only, the thinnest possible 
framework of fact, with a view to convey some one pre- 
vailing sentiment, — one sentiment, one emotion, sim- 
ple, passionate, unalloyed with intellectualizing or anal- 
ysis. That it should be of feeling all compact ; that the 
words should be translucent with the light of the one 
all-pervading emotion, this is the essence of the true 
song. Mr. Carlyle well describes it when he says, " The 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 173 

story, the feeling, is not detailed, but suggested ; not 
said or spouted in rhetorical completeness and coher- 
ence, hut sung in fitful gushes, in glowing hints, in 
fantastic breaks, in warblings not of the voice only, but 
of the whole mind." 

As to the history of these songs, it was only in the 
last century that men began to think them worth col- 
lecting, and only in this century that they have sought 
to trace their age and history. There are few, if any, 
entire songs of which we can be sure that they existed, 
in the form in which we now have them, before the 
Reformation. Snatches and fragments there are of 
much older date, some as early as the war of independ- 
ence, when in the days of Robert Bruce the Scotch 
sang in triumph — 

"Maidens of England 
Sore may ye mourne 
For your lemnians ye hae lost 
At Bannockburn." 

James I., our poet king, is said, besides his graver 
poems, to have composed songs in the vernacular which 
were sung by the people ; but these have perished, or 
are now unknown. James V. celebrated his adventures 
among the peasantry in the somewhat free ballad or 
song, The Gaberlunzie Man. 

With the dawn of the eighteenth century there came 
in Scotland an awakening, some would say a revival, of 
literature of various kinds. It was at this time that 
the popular songs, which hitherto had been almost en- 
tirely left to the peasantry, first began to be esteemed 
by the polite, and regarded as a form of literature. 
The first symptom of this was the publication in 1706 
of Watson's collection of Scotch poems, which con- 



174 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

tained a number of old songs. But that which marked 
most decisively the turn of the tide in favor of the 
old popular minstrelsy was the publication by Allan 
Ramsay of his Tea Table Miscellany in 1724. Ramsay 
was himself a poet and a song-writer, and, living in 
Edinburgh as a bookseller, undertook to supply the 
upper ranks with the songs which he had heard in his 
moorland birthplace. The Tea Table Miscellany was 
intended, as its name suggests, to furnish the more 
polished circles of Edinburgh, at their social meetings, 
with the best specimens of their national melodies. 
Through that collection the homely strains which had 
been born in cottages, and which described the manners 
and feelings of peasants, found their way to the draw- 
ing-rooms of the rich and refined. 

In this collection honest Allan did something to 
preserve the genuine old ware of our songs, which but 
for him might have perished. Many old strains he 
recast after his own taste, substituting for the names 
of Jock and Jennie, Damon and Phyllis ; and for sun 
and moon, Phoebus and Cynthia. A great deal was, no 
doubt, done at this time to spoil the genuine old ware 
by importations of a false classicism from Virgil's 
Eclogues, or perhaps from Pope's imitations of these. 
Much was thus irretrievably lost ; but we may be glad 
that so much was allowed to escape the touch of the 
spoilers. 

Ramsay's collection, and other collections which were 
made early in the eighteenth century, contained many 
songs which belonged to the seventeenth century, if not 
to a remoter date ; songs which are full of the fine 
flavor of old vernacular humor and dialect — here and 
there passing into deep pathos. Such songs are — 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 175 

" Get up and bar the door," " Tak your auld cloak 
about ye," 

" O waly, waly up the bank, 

And waly, waly down the brae." 

These and many more contain all the raciness and 
melodious feeling of the best songs of Burns. 

As a sample of the peculiar manner in which drollery 
and sentiment are blended often iu the same song, take 
one composed by a Forfarshire laird in the last century, 
Carnegie of Balnamoon, who, like many of his name, 
was out with the Prince in the Forty-Five : — 

" My daddie is a cankert carle, 
He '11 no twine wi' his gear ; 
My minnie she 's a scaulding wife, 
Hauds a' the house asteer. 

But let them say, or let them dae, 

It 's a' ane to me, 
For he 's low doun, he 's in the brume, 

That 's waitin' on me : 
Waitin' on me, my love, 

He 's waitin' on me : 
For he 's low doun, he 's in the brume, 
That 's waitin' on me. 

44 My auntie Kate sits at her wheel, 
And sair she lightlies me ; 
But weel I ken it 's a' envy, 
For ne'er a joe has she. 
But let them say, or let them dae, etc 



" Gleed Sandy he cam wast yesti-een, 
And speir'd when I saw Pate; 
And aye sinsyne the neebors round 
They jeer me air and late. 
But let them say, or let them dae, etc." 

After Kamsay's time the love of Scottish song spread 
through all ranks in Scotland, and many exquisite 



176 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

melodies, both tune and words, were added to the cur- 
rent stock by distinguished men of the time, and espe- 
cially by ladies of what Lockhart used to call " the fine 
old Scottish families." Conspicuous among the lady 
songstresses stands Lady Grisell Baillie. She was a 
girl during the troublous times of Charles II. and James 
II., and died a widow in 1746. By her heroic conduct 
in preserving the life of her father, the covenanting 
Earl of Marchmont, she had won the admiration of her 
countrymen, before she was known as a poetess. To the 
heroic Christian character which she displayed while 
still a girl she added the accomplishment of song. One 
of her songs begins — 

" There was ance a may, and she lo'ed na man," 
and It has for a chorus — 

"And were na my heart licht 1 would die." 
The song, excellent in itself, was made more famous by 
being quoted by Robert Burns on a well-known occasion 
in his later days. Lady Grisell was a native of the 
Borders, and a large proj:>ortion of our best songs, as of 
our ballads, came from the Border land. 

Other Border ladies followed her in the path of song, 
especially Miss Jane Elliot, of Minto, and Miss Ruther- 
ford, of Fairnielee, afterwards Mrs. Cockburn, who lived 
to be, in her old age, a friend of Scott's boyhood. Each 
of these made herself famous by one immortal song. 
Miss Elliot, taking up one old line — 

" I 've heard the lilting at our ewe milking," 
and a refrain that remained from the lament sung for 
the Ettrick Forest men who had died at Flodden — 

" The flowers o' the Forest are a wed awa," 
sang it anew in a strain which breathes the finest spirit 
of antiquity. Miss Rutherford, born herself on the 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 177 

edge of Ettrick Forest, took up the same refrain, and 
adapted it to a more recent calamity which befell, in 
her own time, many lairds of the Forest, who were 
overwhelmed with ruin and swept away. The songs of 
these three Border ladies, while they are true to the old 
spirit and manner of our native minstrelsy, did some- 
thing toward refining it, by showing of how pure and 
elevated sentiment it might be made the vehicle. 

These ladies' songs were first made known to the 
world by appearing in a collection of Scottish songs, 
ancient and modern, published in 1769 by David Herd, 
a zealous antiquary and collector. After Ramsay's Mis- 
cellany, this publication of Herd's marks another epoch 
in the history of Scottish song. Herd preserved many 
precious relics of the past, which otherwise would have 
disappeared. He was indefatigable in searching out 
every scrap that was old and genuine, and his eye for 
the genuinely antique was far truer than Ramsay's. 

This, however, must be said: he was so faithful and 
indiscriminate in his zeal for antiquity, that, along with 
the pure ore, he retained much baser metal, which might 
well have been left to perish. Not a few of the songs 
in his collection are coarse and indecent. As has often 
been said, if we wish to know what Burns did to purify 
Scottish song, we have only to compare those which he 
has left us with many which Herd incorporated in his 
collection, and published not twenty years before Burns 
appeared. 

Scottish song is true pastoral poetry, — truer pastoral 
poetry is nowwhere to be found. That is, it expresses 
the lives, thoughts, feelings, manners, incidents, of men 
and women who were shepherds, peasants, crofters, 
and small moorland farmers, in the very language and 
12 



178 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

phrases which they used at their firesides. As I have 

said elsewhere, the productions, many of them, not of 

book-learned men, but of country people, with country 

life, cottage characters and incidents, for their subjects, 

they utter the feelings which poor men have known, 

in the very words and phrases which poor men have 

used. No wonder the Scottish people love them ; for 

never was the heart of any people more fully rendered 

in poetry than Scotland's heart in these songs. Like the 

homely hodden-gray, formerly the cotter's only wear, 

warp and woof, they are entirely homespun. The stuff 

out of which they are composed, 

. " The cardin o 't, the ppinnin o 't, 
The warpin o 't, the winnin o 't," 

is the heart-fibre of a stout and hardy peasantry. 

Every way you take them, — in authorship, in senti- 
ment, in tone, in language, — they are the creation and 
property of the people. And if educated men and high- 
born ladies, and even some of Scotland's kings, have 
added to the store, it was only because they had lived 
familiarly among the peasantry, felt as they felt, and 
spoken their language, that they were enabled to sing 
strains that their country's heart would not disown. For 
the whole character of these melodies, various as they 
are, is so peculiar and so pronounced, that the smallest 
foreign element introduced, one word out of keeping, 
grates on the ear and mars the music. Scottish song 
has both a spirit and a framework of its own, within 
which it rigorously keeps. Into that framework, these 
moulds, it is wonderful how much strong and manly 
thought, how much deep and tender human-heartedness, 
can be poured. But so entirely unique is the inner 
spirit, as well as the outward setting, that no one, not 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 179 

even Burns, could stretch it beyond its compass, without 
your being at once aware of a falsetto note. 

It was the glory of Burns that, taking the old form 
of Scottish song as his instrument, he was able to elicit 
from it so much. That Burns was the creator of Scot- 
tish song no one would have denied more vehemently 
than himself. When he appeared, in 1786, as the na- 
tional poet of his country, the tide of popular taste 
was running strongly in favor of Scottish song. He 
took up that tide of feeling, or rather he was taken up 
by it, and he carried it to its height. He was nurtured 
in a home that was full of song. His mother's memory 
was stored with old tunes or songs of her country, and 
she sang them to her eldest boy from his cradle-time all 
through his boyhood. Amid the multifarious reading 
of his early years, the book he most prized was an old 
song-book, which he carried with him wherever he 
went, poring over it as he drove his cart or walked 
afield, song by song, verse by verse, carefully distin- 
guishing the true, tender, or sublime from affectation 
and fustian. Thus he learned his song-craft and his 
critic-craft together. The earliest poem he composed 
was in his seventeenth summer, a simple love-song in 
praise of a girl who was his companion in the harvest 
field. The last strain he breathed was from his death- 
bed, in remembrance of some former affection. 

Yet deep as were the love and power of song, the 
true lyric throb of heart, within him, it was not as a 
lyrist or song-writer that he first became famous. The 
Kilmarnock volume, which carried him at once to the 
height of poetic fame, contained only three songs, 
and these, though full of promise, are perhaps not his 
best. A song which he addressed to an early love, 



180 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

while he was still young and innocent, composed before 
almost any of his other poems, has a tenderness and 
delicacy reached in only a few of his later love-songs, 
and was the first of his productions which revealed his 
lyric genius : 

"Yestreen, when to the trembling string 
The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
To thee my fancy took its wing, 
I sat, but neither heard nor saw ; 
Though this was fair, and that was braw, 
And yon the toast of a' the town, 
I sigh'd, and said among them a', 
'Ye are na Mary Morison.' 

" Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 
Wha for thy sake wad gladly die ? 
Or canst thou break that heart of his, 
Whase only faut was loving thee? 
If love for love thou wilt na gie, 
At least be pity to me shown ! 
A thought ungentle canna be 
The thought o' Mary Morison.' 

It was during the last eight years of his life that Burns 
threw his whole genius into song. Many have been the 
lamentations over this. Scott has expressed his regret 
that in his later and more evil days Burns had no fixed 
poetic purpose, — did not gird himself to some great 
dramatic work, such as he once contemplated. Carlyle 
has bewailed that " our son of thunder should have 
been constrained to pour all the lightning of his genius 
through the narrow cranny of Scottish song, — the nar- 
rowest cranny ever vouchsafed to any son of thunder." 
We may well regret that his later years were so desul- 
tory ; we cannot but lament the evil habits to which 
latterly he yielded ; we may allow that the supplying 
two collections with weekly cargoes of song must have 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 181 

** degenerated into a slavish labor, which no genius 
could support." All this may well be granted, and yet 
we cannot but feel that Burns was predestined, alike by 
his own native instinct and by his outward circum- 
stances, to be the great song-maker of his country, — 
I might say, of the world. Song was the form of lit- 
erature which he had drunk in from his cradle ; it was 
a realm with which he was more familiar — into which 
he had keener insight — than any one else. He had 
longed from boyhood to shed upon the unknown streams 
of his native Ayrshire some of the power which gen- 
erations of minstrels had shed upon Yarrow and Tweed. 
He tells us in his own vernacular verse that from boy- 
hood he had 

" Ev'n then a wish (I mind its power), 
A wish that to my latest hour 
Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I for poor old Scotland's sake 
Some usef u' plan or book could make, 
Or sing a song at least.' 

He had a compassionate sympathy for the old nameless 
song-makers of his country, lying in their unknown 
graves, all Scotland over. When he had leisure for 
a few brief tours, he went to gaze on the places, the 
names of which were embalmed in their old melodies ; 
he sought out their birthplaces, and looked feelingly 
upon the graves where they lie buried, as Wilson beau- 
tifully says, in kirkyards that have ceased to exist, and 
returned to the wilderness. The moulds which those 
old singers had bequeathed him, the channels they had 
dug, Burns gladly accepted, and into these he poured 
all the fervor of his large and melodious heart. He 
nerceived how great capabilities lay in the old ver- 
nacular Lowland dialect, and in the pastoral form and 



182 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

style of the old Scottish songs, availed himself of these, 
expanded and enriched them ; — this he did, but more 
than this : he entered with his whole soul into the old 
airs and melodies with which the earliest songs were 
associated, and these old melodies became his inspirers. 
He tells us that he laid it down as a rule, from his first 
attempts at song-writing, to sound some old tune over 
and over, till he caught its inspiration. He never com- 
posed a lyric without first crooning a melody to himself, 
in order to kindle his emotion, and regulate the rhythm 
of his words. Sometimes he got an old woman to hum 
the tune to him ; sometimes the village musician to 
scrape it on his fiddle, or a piper to drone it on his bag- 
pipe ; oftener his own wife sang it aloud to him, with 
her wood-note wild. And so his songs are not, like 
many modern ones, set to music ; they are themselves 
music, conceived in an atmosphere of music, rising out 
of it, and with music instinct to their last syllable. But 
the essential melody that was in him might have effected 
little, if he had not possessed a large background of 
mind to draw upon ; a broad and deep world of thought 
and feeling to turn to melody ; a nature largely recep- 
tive of all beauty, of all influences from man and the 
outward world ; most tender sensibility ; vivid and 
many-sided sympathy with all that breathes ; passion- 
ate, headlong impulse, — all these forces acting from 
behind and through an intellect, perhaps the most pow- 
erful of his time, and driving it home with penetrating 
.rasight to the very core of men and things. Yet keen 
as was his intellect, no one knew so well as Burns, that 
in song-writing intellect must be wholly subordinate to 
feeling ; that it must be sheathed and gently charmed ; 
that if for a moment it is allowed to preponderate over 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 183 

feeling, the song is killed. It is the equipoise and per- 
fect intermingling of thought and emotion, the strong 
sense latent through the prevailing melody, that makes 
Burns's songs what they are, the most perfect the world 
has seen. Happy as a singer Burns was in this, that 
his own strong nature, his birth, and all his circum- 
stances, conspired to fix his interest on the primary and 
permanent affections, the great fundamental relations of 
life, which men have always with them, — not on the 
social conventions and ephemeral modes, which are here 
to-day, forgotten in the next generation. In this how 
much happier than Moore or Beranger, or other song- 
writers of society living in a late civilization ! Burns 
had his foot on the primary granite, which is not likely 
to move while anything on earth remains steadfast. 

Consider, too, the perfect naturalness, the entire spon- 
taneity, of his singing. It gushes from him as easily, 
as clearly, as sunnily, as the skylark's song does. In 
this he surpasses all other song-composers. In truth, 
when he is at his best, when his soul is really filled with 
his subject, it is not composing at all ; the word is not 
applicable to him. He sings because he cannot help 
singing, — because his heart is full, and could not other- 
wise relieve itself. 

Consider, again, wliile his songs deal with the primary 
emotions, the permanent relations and situations of 
human nature, how great is the variety of those moods 
and feelings, how large the range of them, to which he 
has given voice ! One emotion with him, no doubt, 
is paramount, — that of love. And it must be owned 
that he allows the amatory muse too little respite. 
As our eye ranges over his songs, we could wish that, 
both for his own peace and for our satisfaction, he had 



184 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

touched this note more sparingly. As Sir Walter says, 

" There is evidence enough that even the genius of 

Burns could not support him in the monotonous task of 

writing love-verses on heaving bosoms and sparkling 

eyes, and twisting them into such rhythmical form a* 

might suit Scotch reels, ports, and strathspeys." 

Yet, allowing all this, when he was really serious, how 

many phases of this emotion has he rendered into words 

which have long since become a part of the mothei 

tongue ! What husband ever breathed to his absent 

wife words more natural and beautiful than those in 

" Of a' the airts the winds can blaw" V 

When did blighted and broken-hearted love mingle 

itself with the sights and sounds of nature more touch- 

ingly than in 

"Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon, 
How can ye blume sae fair ! 
How can ye chant, ye little birds, 
And I sae f u' o' care ? " 

Where is the wooing-match that for pointed humor 
and drollery can compare with that of Duncan Gray, 
when " Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig," and Duncan " spak 
o' lowpin o'er a linn ! " These are lines that for happy 
humor none but Burns could have hit off. Many more 
of his love-songs are equally felicitous, but there is a 
limitation. It has been remarked, and I think truly, 
of Burns's love-songs that their rapture is without 
reverence. The distant awe, with which chivalry ap- 
proaches the loved one it adores, is unknown to him ; it 
was Scott's privilege above all poets to feel and express 
this. Perhaps Burns made some slight approach toward 
this more refined sentiment in his love-song after the 
manner of the old minstrels : — 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 185 

"My luve is like a red, red rose 
That 's newly sprung in June : 
My luve is like a melodie 
That 's sweetly play'd in tune." 

And again in that early song of his to Mary Morison, 
which has been already quoted. 

Besides those effusions of young ardor in which he 
generally indulges, how well has he conceived and de- 
picted the sober certainty of long-wedded love in the 
calm and cheerful pathos of (t John Anderson, my jo, 
John ! " 

One emotion, no doubt, was paramount with Burns, 
and yet how many other moods has he rendered ! 
What can be simpler, easier, one might think, to com- 
pose than such a song as " Should auld acquaintance be 
forgot " ? Yet who else has done it ? There is about 
this song almost a biblical severity, such as we find in 
the words of Naomi, or of one of the old Hebrew pa- 
triarchs. For, as has been said, the whole inevita- 
ble essential conditions of human life, the whole of its 
plain, natural joys and sorrows, are described, — often 
they are only hinted at, — in the Old Testament as 
they are nowhere else. In songs like Auld Lang Syne, 
Burns has approached nearer to this biblical character 
than any other modern poet. Again, if wild revelry 
and bacchanalian joy must find a voice in song, what 
utterance have they found to compare with "Willie 
brewed a peck of maut " ? Certainly not the " Nunc 
est bibendum " of Horace. The heroic chord, too, 
Burns has touched with a powerful hand in " Scots, wha 
bae." The great Scotchman, lately departed, has said 
of it, " As long as there is warm blood in the heart of 
Scotchmen, or of man, it will move in fierce thrills 



186 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

under this war ode, the best, I believe, that was ever 
written by any pen." To this oracle I suppose every 
Scotchman must say, Amen. And yet I have my own 
misgivings. I think that it is to the charm of music 
and old associations rather than to any surpassing ex- 
cellence in the words that the song owes its power. 
Another mood is uttered, a strange wild fascination 
dwells, in the defiant Farewell of Macpherson the High- 
land Reever, who 

" lived a life of sturt and strife, 
And died of treachery ; " 

to whose last words Burns has added this matchless 

chorus : — 

" Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 
Sae dauntingly gaed he ; 
He play'd a spring and danc'd it round 
Below the gallows tree." 

Last of all, I shall name u A man 's a man for a' that," 
which, though not without a touch of democratic bitter 
ness, contains lines that are for all time : — 

11 The rank is but the guinea's stamp ; 
The man 's the gowd for a' that." 

These are but a few samples of the many mental 
moods which Burns has set to melody. He composed 
in all nearly three hundred songs. Of these from thirty 
to forty represent him at his best, at the highest flood- 
mark of his singing power. They are perfect in senti- 
ment, perfect in form. Amid all that was sad and 
heart-depressing in his later years, the making of these 
songs was his comfort and delight. Besides the solace 
he had in the exercise of his powers, he found satisfac- 
tion in the thought that he was doing something to 
atone for the waste of the great gifts with which he had 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 187 

been entrusted. Of these three hundred songs some 
were founded on old words which he took, retouched, or 
recast ; sometimes an old verse or line served as the 
hint, whence he struck off an original song, far better 
than the lost one. For others he made new words 
from beginning to end, keeping to some old tune, and 
preserving the native pastoral style and vernacular 
dialect. 

Every one of them contains some touch of tenderness 
or humor, or some delicate grace or stroke of power, 
which could have come from no other but his master 
hand. And to his great credit be it ever remembered 
that in doing this he purified the ancient songs from 
much coarseness, and made them fit to be heard in de- 
cent society. The poems, and even some of the songs, 
of Burns are not free from grossness, which he himself 
regretted at the last. But in justice to his memory it 
should ever be borne in mind how many songs he purged 
of their coarser element, — how many tunes he found 
associated with unseemly words, and left married to 
verses, pure and beautiful, of his own composing. 
Those old Scottish melodies, said Thomas Aird, him- 
self a poet, " sweet and strong though they were, strong 
and sweet, were all the more, for their very strength 
and sweetness, a moral plague, from the indecent words 
to which many of them had been set. How was the 
plague to be stayed ? All the preachers in the land 
could not divorce the grossness from the music. The 
only way was to put something better in its stead. 
That inestimable something, not to be bought by all the 
mines of California, Burns gave us. And in doing so, 
Vie accomplished a social reform beyond the power of 
pulpit or parliament to effect." 



188 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

That which we have seen to be the native quality of 
Scottish song Burns took up and carried to a higher 
effect. The characteristics of the best old Scottish 
songs, and preeminently of the best songs of Burns, 
are : (1.) Absolute truthfulness ; truthfulness to the 
great facts of life ; truthfulness also to the singer's own 
feelings, — what we mean by sincerity. (2.) Perfect 
naturalness : the feeling embodies itself in a form and 
language as natural to the poet as its song is to the 
bird. This is what Pitt noted when he said of Burns' 
poems that no verse since Shakespeare's " has so much 
the appearance of coming sweetly from nature." I 
should venture to hint, that in this gift of perfect spon- 
taneity Burns was even beyond Shakespeare. (3.) What 
is perhaps but another form of the same thing, you have 
in Burns' songs what, in the language of logicians, I 
would call the " first intention " of thought and feel- 
ing. You overhear in them the first throb of the heart, 
not meditated over, not subtilized or refined, but pro- 
jected warm from the first glow. (4.) To this effect, 
his native Scottish vernacular, which no one has ever 
used like Burns, contributed I know not how much. 
That dialect, broadening so many vowels and dropping 
so many consonants, lends itself especially to humor 
and tenderness, and brings out many shades of those 
feelings which in English would entirely evaporate. 
Nothing, I think, more shows the power of Burns than 
this, that a dialect, which but for him would have per- 
ished ere now, he has made classical, — an imperishable 
portion of the English language. This is but one way 
of putting a broader and very striking fact ; that while 
everything about Burns would seem to localize and 
limit his influence, the language he employed, the color- 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 189 

ing, the manner, the whole environment, — he has in- 
formed a'l these with such strength and breadth of cath- 
olic humanity, that of every emotion which he has sung, 
his has become the permanent and accepted language 
wherever the English tongue is spoken. 

Scottish song, I have said, culminated in Burns. I 
might have gone further, and said that he gave to the 
song a power and a dignity before undreamt of. What 
Wordsworth said of Milton's sonnets may equally be 
said of Burns' songs — in his hand the thing became a 
trumpet — 

"whence he blew 
Soul-animating strains."' 

Is there any other form of poetry or of literature 
which so lays hold of the heart, — which penetrates so 
deep, and is remembered so long ? Although no singer 
equal to Burns has arisen in Scotland since his day, 6r 
will again arise, yet, in the generation which followed 
him, song in his country gained a new impetus from 
what he had done for it. Tannahill, the Ettrick Shep- 
herd, Walter Scott, Lady Nairn, Hugh Ainslie, and 
many more, each made their contribution to swell the 
broad river of their country's song. Other nameless 
men there are who will yet be remembered in Scotland, 
each as the author of one unforgotten song. Lady 
Nairn, I am apt to fancy, is almost our best song-com- 
poser since Burns. She has given us four or five songs, 
each in a different vein, which might be placed next 
after, perhaps even beside, the best of Burns. 

Whether the roll of Scottish song is not now closed, 
is a thought which will often recur to the heart of those 
who love their country better for its songs' sake. The 
melodies, the form, the language, the feeling, of those 



190 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

national lyrics belong to an early state of society. Can 
the old moulds be stretched to admit modern feeling, 
without breaking ? Can the old root put forth fresh 
shoots amid our modern civilization ? Are not school 
boards and educational apparatus doing their best to 
stamp out the grand old dialect, and to make the coun- 
try people ashamed of it ? Can the leisure and the full- 
heartedness, in which song is born, any longer survive, 
amid the hurry of life, the roar of railways, the clash of 
machinery, the universal devotion to manufacture and 
money-making? I should be loath to answer No ; but 
I must own to a painful misgiving, when I remember 
that during the present generation, that is, during the 
last thirty years, Scotland has produced no song which 
can be named along with our old favorites. 

I said that Burns had given a voice to a wide range 
of emotion, — to many moods ; I did not say to all 
moods, — that would have been to exaggerate. There 
is the whole range of sentiment which belongs to the 
learned and the philosophic, that which is born of subtle, 
perhaps over-refined intellect, which he has not touched. 
No Scottish song has touched it. Into that region it 
could not intrude without abrogating its nature and de- 
stroying its intrinsic charm. That charm is that it 
makes us breathe a while the air of the mountains and 
the moors, not that of the schools. But Scottish song 
is limited on another side, which it is not so easy to ac- 
count for. There is little, almost no, allusion to religion 
in it. It is almost as entirely destitute of the distinct- 
ively Christian element, as if it had been composed by 
pagans. Certainly, if we wished to express any pecul- 
iarly Christian feeling or aspiration, we should have 
to look elsewhere than to these songs. Had this been 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 191 

confined to the lyrics of Burns, it might have been ex- 
plained by the fact that he, though not without a haunt- 
ing sense of religion, lived a life which shut him out 
from its serener influences ; he never had the " heart 
set free," from which alone religious poetry can flow. 
But the same want is apparent in almost all Scottish 
songs of every age. The Scotch have passed hitherto 
for a religious people, and, we may hope, not without 
reason. Yet there is hardly one of their popular songs 
which breathes any deep religious emotions, which ex- 
presses any of those thoughts that wander towards eter- 
nity. This is to be accounted for partly by the fact 
that the early Scottish songs were so mingled with 
coarseness and indecency, that the teachers of religion 
and guardians of purity could not do otherwise than 
set their face against them. Song and all pertaining to 
it got to be looked upon as irreligious. Moreover, the 
old stern religion of Scotland was somewhat repressive 
of natural feeling, and divided things sacred from things 
profane by too rigid a partition ; and songs and song- 
singing were reckoned among things profane. Yet the 
native melodies were so beautiful, and the words, not- 
withstanding their frequent coarseness, contained so 
much that was healthful, so much that was intensely 
human, that they could not be put down, but kept sing- 
ing themselves on in the hearts and homes of the people, 
in spite of all denunciations. In the old time, it was 
often the same people who read their Bibles most, whose 
memories were most largely stored with these countless 
melodies. As a modern poetess has said, 

" They sang by turns 
The psalms of David, and the songs of Burns." 

Lady Nairn, who was a religious person, and yet loved 



192 SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 

her country's songs, and felt how much they contain 
which, if not directly religious, was yet " not far from 
the kingdom of heaven," desired to remove the barrier ; 
and she sang one strain, The Land o' the Leal, which, 
even were there none other such, would remain to prove 
how little alien to Christianity is the genuine sentiment 
of Scottish song, — how easily it can rise from true 
human feeling into the pure air of spiritual religion. 
If any Scottish religious teacher of modern times pos- 
sessed a high spiritual ideal, and could set forth the 
stern side of righteousness, it was Edward Irving ; yet 
in his devoutest moods he could still remember the mel- 
odies and songs he had loved in childhood. With a 
passage from his sermon on Religious Meditation, I 
shall conclude : " I have seen Sabbath sights and joined 
in Sabbath worships which took the heart with their 
simplicity and thrilled it with sublime emotions. I have 
crossed the hills in the sober, contemplative autumn to 
reach the retired, lonely church betimes ; and as we 
descended towards the simple edifice, whither every 
heart and every foot directed itself from the country 
around on the Sabbath morn, we beheld issuing from 
every glen its little train of worshippers coming up to 
the congregation of the Lord's house, round which the 
bones of their fathers reposed. In so holy a place the 
people assembled under a roof, where ye of the plenti- 
ful South would not have lodged the porter of your 
gate ; but under that roof the people sat and sang their 
Maker's praise, ' tuning their hearts, by far the noblest 
aim,' and the pastor poured forth to God the simple 
wants of the people, and poured into their attentive 
ears the scope of Christian doctrine and duty. The 
men were shepherds, and came up in their shepherd's 



SCOTTISH SONG, AND BURNS. 193 

guise, and the very brute, the shepherd's servant and 
companion, rejoiced to come at his feet. It was a Sab- 
bath, — a Sabbath of rest ! But were the people stupid ? 
Yes, what an over-excited citizen would call stupid; 
that is, they cared not for parliaments, for plays, routs, 
or assemblies, but they cared for their wives and their 
children, their laws, their religion, and their God ; and 
they sang their own native songs in their own native 
vales, — songs which the men I speak of can alone 
imagine and compose. And from them we citizens have 
to be served with songs and melodies, too, for we can 
make none ourselves." 
13 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

So many biographies, records, and criticisms of Shel 
ley have lately appeared that one may take for granted 
in all readers some general acquaintance with the 
facts of his life. Of the biographies, none perhaps is 
more interesting than the short work by Mr. J. A. Sy- 
monds, which has lately been published as one of the 
series, edited by Mr. Morley, English Men of Letters. 
That work has all the charm which intense admiration 
of its subject, set forth in a glowing style, can lend it. 
Those who in the main hold with Mr. Symonds, and 
are at one with him in his fundamental estimate of 
things, will no doubt find his work highly attractive. 
Those, on the other hand, who do not altogether ad- 
mire Shelley's character, or the theories that moulded it, 
will find Mr. Symonds's work a less satisfactory guide 
than they could have wished. Of the many comments 
and criticisms on Shelley's character and poetry, two of 
the most substantial and rational are an essay by Mr. 
R. H. Hutton, and one by the late Mr. Walter Bagehot. 
These two friends had together in their youth felt the 
charm of Shelley, and each in his riper years has given 
his estimate of the man and of his poetry. We all ad- 
mire that which we agree with ; and nowhere have I 
found on this subject thoughts which seem to me so 
adequate and so helpful as those contained in these 
two essays, none which give such insight into Shelley's 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 195 

abnormal character, and into the secret springs of his 
inspiration. Of the benefit of these thoughts I shall 
freely avail myself, whenever they seem to throw light 
upon my subject. 

The effort to enter into the meaning of "Shelley's po- 
etry is not altogether a painless one. Some may ask, 
Why should it be painful? Cannot you enjoy his 
poems merely in an aesthetic way, take the marvel of 
his subtle thoughts, and the magic of his melody, with- 
out scrutinizing too closely their meaning or moral im- 
port ? This, I suppose, most of my hearers could do 
for themselves, without any comment of mine. Such 
a mere surface, dilettante way of treating the subject 
might be entertaining, but it would be altogether un- 
worthy of this place. " f All true literature, all genuine 
poetry, is the direct outcome, the condensed essence, of 
actual life and thought. Lyric poetry for the most part 
is — Shelley's especially was — the vivid expression of 
personal experience. It is only as poetry is founded on 
reality that it has any solid value ; otherwise it is 
worthless. Before, then, attempting to understand 
Shelley's lyrics, I must ask what was the reality out of 
which they came — that is, what manner of man Shel- 
ley was, what were his ruling views of life, along what 
lines did his thoughts move ? 

Those who knew Shelley best speak of the sweetness 
and refinement of his nature, of his lofty disinterested- 
ness, his unworldliness. They speak too of something 
like heroic self-forgetfulness. These things we can in a 
measure believe, for there are in his writings many traits 
that look like those qualities. And yet one receives 
with some reserve the high eulogies of his friends ; 
for we feel that these were not generally men whose 



196 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

moral estimates we can entirely accept, and there were 
incidents in his life which seem somewhat at variance 
with the qualities they attribute to him. When Byron 
speaks of his purity of mind, we cannot but doubt how 
far Byron can be accepted as a good judge of purity. 

One of his biographers has said that in no man was 
the moral sense ever more completely developed than 
in Shelley, in none was the perception of right and wrong 
more acute. I rather think that the late Mr. Bagehot 
was nearer the mark when he asserted that in Shelley 
conscience, in the strict meaning of that word, never had 
been revealed — that he was almpst entirely without 
conscience. Moral susceptibilities and impulses, keen 
and refined, he had. He was inspired with an enthusiasm 
of humanity after a kind ; hated to see pain in others, 
and would willingly relieve it ; hated oppression, and 
stormed against it ; but then all rule and authority he 
regarded as oppression. He felt for the poor and the 
suffering, and tried to help them, and willingly would 
have shared with all men the vision of good which he 
sought for himself. But these passionate impulses are 
something very different from conscience. Conscience 
first reveals itself, when we become aware of the strife 
between a lower and a higher nature within us — a law 
of the flesh warring against the law of the mind. And 
it is out of this experience that moral religion is born, 
the higher law leading us to One whom that law repre- 
sents. As Canon Mozley has said, " it is an introspec- 
tion on which all religion is built — man going into 
himself and seeing the struggle within him ; and thence 
getting self-knowledge, and thence the knowledge of 
God." But Shelley seems to have been conscious of no 
such strife, to have known nothing of the inward struggle 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 197 

between flesh and spirit. He was altogether a child of 
impulse — of impulse, one, total, all-absorbing. And 
the impulse that came to him he followed whithersoever 
it went, without questioning either himself or it. He 
was preeminently rols irdOeatv aKokovOrjTiKos, one who 
followed his passions unquestioningly ; and Aristotle, we 
know, tells us that such an one is no fit judge of moral 
truth. But this peculiarity, which made him so little 
fitted to guide either his own life or that of others, 
tended, on the other hand, to make him preeminently a 
lyric poet. How it fitted him for this we shall pres- 
ently see. But abandonment to impulse, however much 
it may contribute to lyrical inspiration, is a poor guide 
to conduct ; and a poet's conduct in life, of whatever 
kind it be, quickly reacts on his poetry. It was so 
with Shelley. 

It would be painful to revert to unhappy incidents, 
and as needless as painful. But when one reads in Mr. 
Symonds's book that Shelley's youth was " strongly 
moralized," some incidents of his early years rise to 
mind which make ordinary persons ask, with wonder, 
what sort of morality it was wherewith he was " moral- 
ized." 

Partisans of Shelley will, I know, reply, " You judge 
Shelley by the conventional morality of the present day, 
and, judging him by this standard, of course you at once 
condemn him. Do you not know that it was against 
these very conventions, which you call morality, that 
Shelley's whole life was a protest? He was the prophet 
of something truer or better than this." But was Shel- 
ley's revolt only against the conventional morality of his 
own time, and not rather against the fundamental mo- 
rality of all time ? Had he merely cried out against the 



198 SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. 

stifling political atmosphere and the dry, dead ortho- 
doxy of the Regency and the reign of George IV., and 
longed for some ampler air, freer and more life-giving, 
one could well have understood, even sympathized with, 
him. His rebellion, however, was not against the limita- 
tions and corruptions of his own day, but against the 
moral verities which two thousand years have tested, and 
which have been approved not only by eighteen Chris- 
tian centuries, but no less by the wisdom of Virgil and 
Cicero, of Aristotle and Sophocles. Shelley may be 
the prophet of a new morality ; but it is one which never 
can be realized till moral law has been obliterated from 
the universe, and conscience from the heart of man. 

That he possessed many noble traits of character, 
none can gainsay ; and yet it is impossible, when reading 
his life and his poetry, not to feel that his nature must 
have been traversed by some strange deep flaw, marred 
by some radical inward defect. In some of his gifts and 
impulses he was more — in other things essential to 
goodness, he was far less — than other men ; a fully 
developed man he certainly was not. I am inclined to 
believe that, for all his noble impulses and aims, he was 
in some way deficient in rational and moral sanity. 
Many will remember Hazlitt's somewhat cynical de- 
scription of him ; yet, to judge by his writings, it looks 
like truth. He has " a fire in his eye, a fever in his 
blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his 
speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He 
is sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced." This is 
just the outward appearance we could fancy for his 
inward temperament. What was that temperament ? 

He was entirely a child of impulse, lived and longed 
for high-strung and intense emotion — simple, all-absorb- 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 199 

ing, all-penetrating emotion, going straight on in one 
direction to its object, hating and resenting whatever 
opposed its progress thitherward. The object which he 
longed for was some abstract intellectualized spirit of 
beauty and loveliness, which should thrill his spirit, un- 
ceasingly, with delicious shocks of emotion. 

This yearning, panting desire is expressed by him in 
a thousand forms and figures throughout his poetry. 
Again and again this yearning recurs — 

" I pant for the music which is divine, 

My heart in its thirst is a dying flower ; 
Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine, 

Loosen the notes in a silver shower ; 

Like a herbless plain for the gentle rain 

I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. 

"Let uie drink the spirit of that sweet sound; 

More, O more ! I am thirsting yet ; 
It loosens the serpent which care has bound 

Upon my heart to stifle it ; 
The dissolving strain, through every vein, 

Passes into my heart and brain." 

It was not mere sensuous enjoyment that he sought, 
but keen intellectual and emotional delight — the men- 
tal thrill, the glow of soul, the " tingling of the nerves,'* 
that accompany transcendental rapture. His hungry 
craving was for intellectual beauty, and the delight it 
yields ; if not that, then for horror ; anything to thrill 
the nerves, though it should curdle the blood, and make 
the flesh creep. Sometimes for a moment this perfect 
abstract loveliness would seem to have embodied itself 
in some creature of flesh and blood; but only for a 
moment would the sight soothe him — the sympathy 
would cease, the glow of heart would die down — and 
he would pass on in hot, insatiable pursuit of new rap- 
ture. " There is no rest for us," says the great preacher, 



200 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

" save in quietness, confidence, and affection." This was 
not what Shelley dreamed of, but something very dif- 
ferent from this. 

The pursuit of abstract ideal beauty was one form 
which his hungry, insatiable desire took. Another pas- 
sion that possessed him was the longing to pierce to 
the very heart of the mystery of existence. It has been 
said that before an insoluble mystery, clearly seen to be 
insoluble, the soul bows down and is at rest, as before 
an ascertained truth. Shelley knew nothing of this. 
Before nothing would his soul bow down. Every veil, 
however sacred, he would rend, pierce the inner shrine 
of being, and force it to give up its secret. There is 
in him a profane audacity, an utter awelessness. Intel- 
lectual AiSois was to him unknown. Reverence was to 
him another word for hated superstition. Nothing was 
to him inviolate ; all the natural reserves he would 
break down. Heavenward, he would pierce to the heart 
of the universe and lay it bare ; manward, he would lay 
bare the inner precincts of personality. Every soul 
should be free to mingle with any other, as so many 
raindrops do. In his own words, 

" The fountains of our deepest life shall be 
Confused in passion's golden purity." 

However fine the language in which such feelings may 
clothe themselves, in truth they are wholly vile ; there 
is no horror of shamelessness which they may not gen- 
erate. Yet this is what comes of the unbridled desire 
for " tingling pulses," quivering, panting, fainting sen- 
sibility, which Shelley everywhere makes the supreme 
happiness. It issues in awelessness, irreverence, and 
what some one has called " moral nudity." 

These two impulses both combined with another pas 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 201 

sion he had — the passion for reforming the world. He 
had a real, benevolent desire to impart to all men the 
peculiar good he sought for himself — a life of free, 
unimpeded impulse, of passionate, unobstructed desire. 
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity — these of course; but 
something far beyond these — absolute Perfection, as 
he conceived it, he believed to be within every man's 
reach. Attainable, if only all the growths of history 
could be swept away, — all authority and government, 
all religion, law, custom, nationality, everything that 
limits and restrains — and if every man were left open 
to the uncontrolled expansion of himself and his im- 
pulses. The end of this process of making a clean 
sweep of all that is, and beginning afresh, would be 
that family ties, social distinctions, government, wor- 
ship, would disappear, and then man would be king 
over himself, and wise, gentle, just, and good. Such 
was his temperament, the original emotional basis of 
Shelley's nature ; such, too, some of the chief beliefs 
and aims towards which this temperament impelled him. 
And certainly these aims do make one think of the 
" maggot in the brain. " But a temperament of this 
kind, whatever aims it turned to, was eminently and es- 
sentially lyrical. Those thrills of soul, those tingling 
nerves, those rapturous glows of feeling, are the very 
substance out of which high lyrics are woven. 

The insatiable craving to pierce the mystery of course 
drove Shelley to philosophy for instruments to pierce 
it with. During his brief life he was a follower of 
three distinct schools of thought. At first he began 
with the philosophy of the senses, was a materialist, 
adopting Lucretius as his master, and holding that atoms 
are the only realities, with, perhaps, a pervading life of 



202 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

nature to mould them — that from atoms all things 
come, to atoms return. Yet even over this dreary- 
creed, without spirit, immortality, or God, he shouted 
a jubilant " Eureka," as though he had found in it some 
new glad tidings. 

From this he passed into the school of Hume — got 
rid of matter, the dull clods of earth, denied both mat- 
ter and mind, and held that these were nothing but im- 
pressions, with no substance behind them. This was a 
creed more akin to Shelley's cast of mind than mate- 
rialism. Not only dull clods of matter, but personality, 
the " I " and the u thou," were by this creed eliminated, 
and that exactly suited Shelley's way of thought. It 
gave him a phantom world. 

From Hume he went on to Plato, and in him found 
still more congenial nutriment. The solid, fixed entities 
— matter and mind — he could still deny, while he was 
led on to believe iu eternal archetypes behind all phe- 
nomena, as the only realities. These Platonic ideas at- 
tracted his abstract intellect and imagination, and are 
often alluded to in his later poems, as in Adonais. Out 
of this philosophy it is probable that he got the only 
object of worship which he ever acknowledged, the 
Spirit of Beauty — Plato's idea of beauty changed into 
a spirit, but without will, without morality ; in his own 
words — 

"That Light whose smile kindles the universe, 
That Beauty in which all things work and move, 
That Benediction which the eclipsing curse 
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
Which, through the web of being blindly wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The fire for which all thirst." 



SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. ' 203 

To the moral and religious truths which are the back- 
bone of Plato's thought he never attained. Shelley's 
thought never had any backbone. Each of these suc- 
cessively adopted philosophies entered into and colored 
the successive stages of Shelley's poetry ; but through 
them all his intellect and imagination remained un- 
changed. 

What was the nature of that intellect ? It was wholly 
akin and adapted to the temperament I have described 
as his. Impatient of solid substances, inaccessible to 
many kinds of truth, inappreciative of solid, concrete 
facts, it was quick and subtle to seize the evanescent 
hues of things, the delicate aromas which are too fine 
for ordinary perceptions. His intellect waited on his 
temperament, and, so to speak, did its will — caught up, 
one by one, the warm emotions as they were thrown 
off, and worked them up into the most exquisite ab- 
stractions. The rush of throbbing pulsations supplied 
the materials for his keen-edged thought to work on, 
and these it did mould into the rarest, most beautiful 
shapes. This his mind was busy doing all his life long. 
The real world, existence as it is to other minds, he 
recoiled from — shrank from the dull gross earth which 
we see around us — nor less from the unseen world of 
Righteous Law and Will which we apprehend above us. 
The solid earth he did not care for. Heaven — a moral 
heaven — there was that in him which would not tolerate. 
So, as Mr. Hutton has said, his mind made for itself 
a dwelling-place, midway between heaven and earth, 
equally remote from both, some interstellar region, some 
cold, clear place 

"Pinnacled dim in the intense inane," 
which he peopled with ideal shapes and abstractions, 



204 • SHELLEY AS A LYKLC POET. 

wonderful or weird, beautiful or fantastic, all woven out 
of his own dreaming phantasy. 

This was the world in which he was at home ; he was 
not at home with any reality known to other men. Few 
real human characters appear in his poetry ; his own 
pulsations, desires, aspirations, supplied the place of 
these. Hardly any actual human feeling is in them ; 
only some phase of evanescent emotion, or the shadow 
of it, is seized — not even the flower of human feeling, 
but the bloom of the flower, or the dream of the bloom. 
A real landscape he has seldom described, only he has 
caught his own impression of it, or some momentary 
gleam, some tender light, that has fleeted vanishingly 
over earth and sea. Nature he used mainly to cull 
from it some of its most delicate tints, some faint 
hues of the dawn or of the sunset clouds, to weave in 
and color the web of his abstract dream. So entirely 
at home is he in this abstract shadowy world of his own 
making, that, when he would describe common visible 
things, he does so by likening them to those phantoms 
of the brain, as though with these last alone he was 
familiar. Virgil likens the ghosts by the banks of Styx 
to falling leaves — 

" Quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo 
Lapsa cadunt folia." 

Shelley likens falling leaves to ghosts. Before the wind 

the dead leaves, he says, 

"Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." 

Others have compared thought to a breeze. With 

Shelley the breeze is like thought ; the pilot spirit of 

the blast, he says, 

" Wakens the leaves and waves, ere it hath past. 
To such brief unison as on the brain 



SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. 205 

One tone which never can recur has cast 
One accent, never to return again." 

We see thus that nature, as it actually exists, has 
little place in Shelley's poetry. And man, as he really 
is, may be said to have no place at all. 

Neither is the world of moral or spiritual truth there 
— not the living laws by which the world is governed — 
no presence of a Sovereign Will, no all-wise Personal- 
ity, behind the fleeting shows of time. The abstract 
world, in which his imagination dwelt, is a cold, weird, 
unearthly, unhuman place, peopled with shapes which 
we may wonder at, but cannot love. When we first en- 
counter these, we are fain to exclaim, Earth we know, 
and heaven we know, but who and what are ye? Ye 
belong neither to things human nor to things divine. 
After a very brief sojourn in Shelley's ideal world, with 
its pale abstractions, most men are ready to say with 
another poet, after a voyage among the stars — 

" Then back to earth, the dear green earth ; 
Whole ages though I here should roam, 
The world for my remarks and me 
Would not a Avhit the better be : 

I 've left my heart at home." 

In that dear green earth, and the men who have lived 
or still live on it, in their human hopes and fears, in 
their faiths and aspirations, lies the truest field for the 
highest imagination to work in. That is, and ever will 
be, the haunt and main region for the songs of the 
greatest poets. The real is the true world for a great 
poet, but it was not Shelley's world. 

Yet Shelley, while the imaginative mood was on him, 
felt this ideal world of his to be as real as most men 
feel the solid earth, and through the pallid lips of its 
phantom people and dim abstractions he pours as warm 



206 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

a flood of emotion, as ever poet did through the rosiest 
lips and brightest eyes of earth-born creatures. Not 
more real to Burns were his Bonny Jean and his High- 
land Mary, than to Shelley were the visions of Asia and 
Panthea, and the Lady of the Sensitive Plant, while he 
gazed upon them. And when his affections did light, 
not on these abstractions, but on creatures of flesh and 
blood, yet so penetrated was his thought with his own 
idealism, that he lifted them up from earth into a rare- 
lied atmosphere, and described them in the same style 
of imagery and language as that with which he clothes 
the phantoms of his mind. Thus, after all, Shelley's 
imagination had but a narrow tract to range over, be- 
cause it took little or no note of reality, and because, 
boundless as was his fertility and power of resource 
within his own chosen circle, the widest realm of mere 
brain-creation must be thin and small, compared with 
the realities which exist both in the seen and the un- 
seen worlds. 

This is the reason why most of Shelley's long poems 
are such absolute failures, while his short lyrics have so 
wonderful a charm. Mere thrills of soul were weak as 
connecting bonds for long poems. Distilled essences 
and personified qualities were poor material, out of 
which to build up great works. These things could give 
neither unity, nor motive power, nor human interest to 
long poems. Hence the incoherence which all but a 
few devoted admirers find in Shelley's long poems, de- 
spite their grand passages and their splendid imagery. 
In fact, if the long poems were to be broken up and 
thrown into a heap, and the lyric portions riddled out of 
them and preserved, the world would lose nothing, and 
would get rid of not a little superfluity. An exception 



SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. 207 

to this judgment is generally made in favor of the 
Cenci ; but that tragedy turns on an incident so repul- 
sive that, notwithstanding its acknowledged pow T er, it 
can hardly satisfy any healthy mind. 

On the other hand, single thrills of rapture, which 
are insufficient to make long poems out of, supply the 
very inspiration for the true lyric. It is this predomi- 
nance of emotion, so unhappy to himself, which made 
Shelley the lyrist that he was. When he sings his lyric 
strains, whatever is least pleasing in him is softened 
down, if it does not wholly disappear. Whatever is 
most unique and excellent in him comes out at its best — 
his eye for abstract beauty, the subtlety of his thought, 
the rush of his eager pursuing desire, the splendor of 
his imagery, the delicate rhythm, the matchless music. 
These lyrics are gales of melody blown from a far-off 
region, that looks fair in the distance. To enjoy them 
it may perhaps be as well not to inquire too closely 
what is the nature of that land, or to know too exactly 
the theories and views of life of which these songs are 
the effluence. If we come too near, we may find that 
there is poison in the air. Many a one has read those 
lyrics, and felt their fascination, without thought of the 
unhappy experience out of which they have come. They 
understood " a beauty in the words, but not the words." 
I doubt whether any one after very early youth, any 
one who has known the realities of life, can continue to 
take Shelley's best songs to heart, as he can those of 
Shakespeare or the best of Burns. For, however we 
may continue to wonder at the genius that is in them^ 
no healthy mind will find in them the expression of its 
truest and best thoughts. 

Other lyric poets, it has been said, sing of what they 



208 SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. 

feel. Shelley in his lyrics sings of what he wants to 
feel. The thrills of desire, the gushes of emotion, are 
all straining after something seen afar, but unattained, 
something distant or future ; or they are passionate 
despair, — utter despondency for something hopelessly 
gone. Yet it must be owned that those bursts of pas- 
sionate desire after ideal beauty set our pulses a-throb- 
bing with a strange vibration, even when we do not 
really sympathize with them. Even his desolate wails 
make those for a moment seem to share his despair who 
do not really share it. Such is the charm of his im- 
passioned eloquence, and the witchery of his music. 

Let us turn now to look at some of his lyrics in de- 
tail. 

The earliest of them, those of 1814, were written 
while Shelley was under the depressing weight of mate- 
rialistic belief, and at the time when he was abandoning 
poor Harriet Westbrook. For a time he lived under 
the spell of that ghastly faith, hugging it, yet hating it ; 
and its progeny are the lyrics of that time, such as 
Death, Mutability, Lines in a Country Churchyard. 
These have a cold, clammy feel. They are full of 
" wormy horrors," as though the poet were one, 

' ; who had made his bed 
In charnels and on coffins, where black Death 
Keeps record of the trophies won from Life," 

as though, by dwelling amid these things, he had hoped 
to force some lone ghost 

" to render up the tale 
Of what we are." 

And what does it all come to ? What is the lesson he 

reads there ? 

" Lift not the painted veil which those who live 
Call life. . . . Behind lurk Fear 



SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. 209 

And Hope, twin destinies, who ever weave 
Their shadows o'er the chasm, sightless and drear." 

That is all that the belief in mere matter taught Shelley, 
or ever will teach any one. 

As he passed on, the clayey, clammy sensation is less 
present. Even Hume's impressions are better than 
mere dust, and the Platonic ideas are better than 
Hume's impressions. When he came under the influ- 
ence of Plato his doctrine of ideas, as eternal existences 
and the only realities, exercised over Shelley the charm 
it always has had for imaginative minds ; and it fur- 
nished him with a form under which he figured to him- 
self his favorite belief in the Spirit of Love and Beauty, 
as the animating spirit of the universe — that for which 
the human soul pants. It is the passion for this ideal 
which leads Alastor through his long wanderings to die 
at last in the Caucasian wilderness, without attaining it. 
It is this which he apostrophizes in the Hymn to Intel- 
lectual Beauty, as the power which consecrates all it 
shines on, as the awful loveliness to which he looks to 
free this world from its dark slavery. It is this vision 
which reappears in its highest form in Prometheus Un- 
bound, the greatest and most attractive of all Shelley's 
longer poems. That drama is from beginning to end 
a great lyrical poem, or I should rather say a congeries 
of lyrics, in which perhaps more than anywhere else 
Shelley's lyrical power has highest soared. The whole 
poem is exalted by a grand pervading idea, one which 
in its truest and deepest form is the grandest we can 
conceive — the idea of the ultimate renovation of man 
and of the world. And although the powers, and pro- 
cesses, and personified abstractions, which Shelley in- 
voked to effect this end, are ludicrously inadequate, as 
u 



210 SHELLEY AS A LYRLC POET. 

irrational as it would be to try to build a solid house 
out of shadows and moonbeams, yet the high ideal im- 
parts to the poem something of its own elevation. 
Prometheus, the representative of suffering and strug- 
gling humanity, is to be redeemed and perfected by 
union with Asia, who is the ideal of beauty, the light of 
life, the spirit of love. To this spirit Shelley looked 
to rid the world of all that is evil, and to bring in the 
diviner day. The lyric poetry, which is exquisite 
throughout, perhaps culminates in the song in which 
Panthea, one of the nymphs, hails her sister Asia, as 

" Life of Life ! thy lips enkindle 

With their love the breath between them ; 

And thy smiles, before they dwindle, 
Make the cold air fire ; then screen them 

In those looks, where whoso gazes 

Faints, entangled in their mazes. 

" Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning 

Through the vest which seems to hide them ; 

As the radiant lines of morning 
Through the clouds, ere they divide them ; 

And this atmosphere divinest 

Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 

" Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest, 
The dim shapes are clad with brightness, 

And the souls of whom thou loyest 
"Walk upon the winds with lightness, 

Till they fail, as I am failing, 

Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing." 

The reply of Asia to this song is hardly less exqui- 
site. Every one will remember it : — 

" My soul is an enchanted boat, 

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float 
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; 
And thine doth like an angel sit 
Beside the helm, conducting it, 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 211 

Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing; 

It seems to float ever, forever, 

Upon the many-winding river, 

Between mountains, woods, abysses, 

A paradise of wildernesses ! 
Till, like one in slumber bound, 
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around 
Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound. 

"Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions 

In music's most serene dominions, 
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. 

And we sail on, away, afar 

Without a course, without a star, 
But, by the instinct of sweet music driven ; 

Till through Elysian garden islets 

By thee, most beautiful of pilots, 

Where never mortal pinnace glided, 

The boat of my desire is guided : 
Realms where the air we breathe is love, 
Which in the winds on the waves doth move, 
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above." 

In these two lyrics you have Shelley at his highest 
perfection. Exquisitely beautiful as they are, they are, 
however, beautiful as the mirage is beautiful, and as un- 
substantial. There is nothing in the reality of things 
answering to Asia. She is not human, she is not di- 
vine. There is nothing moral in her — no will, no 
power to subdue evil ; only an exquisite essence, a melt- 
ing loveliness. There is in her no law, no righteous- 
ness ; something which may enervate, nothing which 
can brace the soul. 

Perfect as is the workmanship of those lyrics in Pro- 
metheus and of many another, their excellence is less- 
ened by the material out of which they are woven be- 
ing fantastic, not substantial truth. Few of them lay 
hold of real sentiments which are catholic to humanity. 
They do not deal with permanent emotions which be- 



212 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

long to all men and are for all time, but appeal rather 
to minds in a particular stage of culture, and that not a 
healthy stage. They are not of such stuff as life is 
made of. They will not interest all healthy and truth- 
ful minds in all stages of culture, and in all ages. To 
do this, however, is, I believe, a note of the highest or- 
der of lyric poem. 

Another thing to be observed is, that while the im- 
agery of Shelley's lyrics is so splendid and the music 
of their language so magical, both of these are at that 
point of over-bloom which is on the verge of decay. 
The imagery, for all its splendor, is too ornate, too re- 
dundant, too much overlays the thought, which has not 
strength enough to uphold such a weight of ornament. 
Then, as to the music of the words, wonderful as it is, 
all but exclusive admirers of Shelley must have felt at 
times, as if the sound runs away with the sense. In 
some of the Prometheus lyrics the poet, according to Mr. 
Symonds, seems to have " realized the miracle of mak- 
ing words, detached from meaning, the substance of a 
new ethereal music." This is, to say the least, a dan- 
gerous miracle to practise. Even Shelley, overborne 
Vy the power of melodious words, would at times seem 
to approach perilously near the borders of the unintel- 
ligible, not to say the nonsensical. What it comes to, 
when adopted as a style, has been seen plainly enough 
in some of Shelley's chief followers in our own day. 
Cloyed with overloaded imagery, and satiated almost to 
sickening with alliterative music, we turn for reinvigo- 
ration to poetry that is severe, even to baldness. 

The Prometheus Unbound was written in Italy, and 
during his four Italian years Shelley's lyric stream 
flowed on unremittingly, and enriched England's poetry 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 213 

with many lyrics unrivalled in their kind, and added to 
its language a new power. These lyrics are on the 
whole his best poetic work. To go over them in detail 
would be impossible, besides being needless. Perhaps 
his year most prolific in lyrics was 1820, just two years 
before his death. Among the products of this year 
were The Sensitive Plant, Tfie Cloud, The Skylark, 
Love's Philosophy, Areihusa, Hymns of Pan, and of 
Apollo, all in his best manner, with many besides these. 
About the lyrics of this time two things are noticeable : 
more of them are about things of nature than heretofore, 
and several of them revert to themes of Greece. 

Of all modern attempts to renovate Greek subjects, 
there are, perhaps, none equal to these, unless it be one 
or two of the Laureate's happiest efforts. They take 
the Greek forms and mythologies, and fill them with 
modern thought and spirit. And perhaps this is the 
only way to make Greek subjects real and interesting 
to us. If we want the very Greek spirit we had better 
go to the originals, not to any reproductions. 

It is thus he makes Pan sing — 

"From the forests and highlands 
We come, we come ; 
From the river-girt islands, 
Where loud waves are dumb, 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 



Liquid Peneus was flowing, 

And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 

The light of the dying day, 

Speeded with my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 

And the nymphs of the woods and waves, 
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, 



214 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

And the brink of the dewy caves, 
And all that did then attend or follow, 
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, 
"With envy of my sweet pipings. 

"I sang of the dancing stars, 
I sang of the daidal earth, 
And of Heaven and the giant wars, 
And Love, and Death, and Birth, 
And then I changed my pipings — 
Singing how down the vale of Menalus 

I pursued a maiden and clasped a weed : 
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ! 

It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed: 
All wept, as I think both ye now would, 
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, 
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings." 

Of the lyrics on natural objects the two supreme ones 
are the Ode to the West Wind and The Skylark. Of 
this last nothing need be saicf. Artistically and poet- 
ically it is unique, has a place of its own in poetry ; yet 
may I be allowed to express a misgiving, which I have 
long felt, and others too may feel ? For all its beauty, 
perhaps one would rather not recall it, when hearing 
the skylark's song in the fields on a bright spring morn- 
ing. The poem is not in tune with the bird's song 
and the feelings it does and ought to awaken. The 
rapture with which the strain springs up at first dies 
down before the close into Shelley's ever-haunting mel- 
ancholy. Who wishes, when hearing the real skylark, 
to be told that — 

" We look before and after, 
And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 
With some pain is fraught " ? 

If personal feeling must be inwrought into the living 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 215 

powers of nature, let it be such feeling as is in keeping 

with the object, appropriate to the time and place. In 

this spirit is the invocation with which Shelley closes 

his grand Ode to the West Wind, written the previous 

year, 1819 — 

"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
What if my leaves are fallen like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

" Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
My spirit ! be thou me, impetuous one ! 

" Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 

Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth ; 
And, by the incantation of this verse, 

" Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 

" The trumpet of a prophecy ! Wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? " 

This ode ends with some vigor, some hope ; but that 
is not usual with Shelley. Every one must have noticed 
how almost habitually his intensest lyrics — those which 
have started with the fullest swing of rapture — die 
down, before they close, into a wail of despair. It is 
is though, when the strong gush of emotion had spent 
itself, there was no more behind, nothing to fall back 
upon, but blank emptiness and desolation. It is this 
that makes Shelley's poetry so unspeakably sad — sad 
with a hopeless sorrow that is like none other. You 
feel as though he were a wanderer who has lost his way 
hopelessly in the wilderness of a blank universe. True 
is Carlyle's well-known saying, " his cry is like the infi- 
nite inarticulate wailing of forsaken infants." In the 



216 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

wail of his desolation there are many tones — some 
wild and weird, some defiant, some full of desponding 
pathos. 

The Lines written in Dejection, on the Bay of Naples, 
in 1818, are perhaps the most touching of all his wails, 
the words are so sweet, they seem, by their very sweet- 
ness, to lighten the load of heart-loneliness : — 

" I see the Deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple seaweeds strown; 
I see the waves upon the shore, 

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown : 
I sit upon the sands alone; 

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean 
Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion, 
How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion. 

4 Alas ! I have nor hope, nor health, 
Nor peace within, nor calm around, 
Nor that content, surpassing wealth, 
The sage in meditation found. 

" Yet now despair itself is mild, 

Even as the winds and waters are ; 
I could lie down like a tired child, 
And weep away this life of care 
Which I have borne, and yet must bear, 

Till death like sleep might steal on me, 
And I might feel in the warm air 
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony." 

"Who that reads these sighing lines but must feel for 
the heart that breathed them ! Yet how can we be 
surprised that he should have felt so desolate ? Every 
heart needs some stay. And a heart so keen, a spirit 
so finely touched, as Shelley's, needed, far more than 
narrow and unsympathetic natures, a refuge amid the 
storms of life. But he knew of none. His universe 



SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 217 

was a homeless one ; it had no centre of repose. His 
universal essence of love, diffused throughout it, con- 
tained nothing substantial — no will that could control 
and support his own. While a soul owns no law, is 
without awe, lives wholly by impulse, what rest, what 
central peace, is possible for it ? When the ardors of 
emotion have died down, what remains for it,, but weak- 
ness, exhaustion, despair? The feeling of his weakness 
awoke in Shelley no brokenness of spirit, no self-abase- 
ment, no reverence. Nature was to him really the 
whole, and he saw in it nothing but " a revelation of 
death, a sepulchral picture, generation after generation 
disappearing, and being heard of and seen no more.' , 
He rejected utterly that other " consolatory revelation 
which tells us that we are spiritual beings, and have a 
spiritual source of life " and strength, above and be- 
yond the material system. Such a belief, or rather no 
belief, as his, can engender only infinite sadness, infinite 
despair. And this is the deep undertone of all Shelley's 
poetry. 

I have dwelt on his lyrics because they contain little 
of the questionable elements which here and there ob- 
trude themselves in the longer poems. And one may 
speak of these lyrics without agitating too deeply ques- 
tions which at present I would rather avoid. Yet even 
the lyrics bear some impress of the source whence they 
come. Beautiful though they be, they are like those 
fine pearls which, we are told, are the products of dis- 
ease in the parent shell. All Shelley's poetry is, as 
it were, a gale blown from a richly dowered but not 
healthy land ; and the taint, though not so perceptible 
\n the lyrics, still hangs more or less over many of the 
finest. Besides this defect, they are very limited in 



218 SHELLEY AS A LYRIC POET. 

their range of influence. They cannot reach the hearts 
of all men. They fascinate only some of the educated, 
and that probably only while they are young. The 
time comes when these pass out of that peculiar sphere 
of thought, and find little interest in such poetry. 
Probably the rare exquisiteness of their workmanship 
will always preserve Shelley's lyrics, even after the 
world has lost, as we may hope it will lose, sympathy 
with their substance. But better, stronger, more vital 
far are those lyrics which lay hold on the permanent, 
unchanging emotions of man — those emotions which 
all healthy natures have felt, and always will feel, and 
which no new deposit of thought or of civilization can 
ever bury out of sight. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE POETRY OP THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 

OSSIAN. 

It was towards the end of August when I bethought 
me of my Oxford audience, and of what I should say 
when next I met them. Around me was the flush of 
the heather on all the braes; before me the autumn 
lights and shadows were trailing over the higher Bens. 
With the power of the hills thus upon him, who could 
turn to books ? It seemed impossible for me to fix on 
any subject which was not in keeping with the sights 
on which my eyes were resting the while. 

And then I thought of the countless throng of stran- 
gers from England and from all lands, who at that mo- 
ment were crowding all the tourist thoroughfares of the 
Highlands, visiting the usual lochs and glens, and climb- 
ing, perhaps, some of the more famous mountains. 
And I could not but feel how rarely any one of these 
penetrates beyond the mere shell of what he sees, or 
gets a glimpse into the heart of that mountain vision 
which passes before him. It cannot be that they should. 
They hurry for a week or ten days, which are all they 
have leisure for, along the beaten tracks ; they catch 
from the deck of a crowded steamer or the top of a stage 
coach, rapid views of mountains, moors, and sea-lochs, 
which may for a moment please the eye and refresh 
the spirit. But it is not thus that the mountain soli- 
tudes render up their secret, and melt into the heart 



220 THE POETRY- OF THE 

A momentary glance at the pine woods of Rothiemur- 
chus, and the granite cliffs of the Cairngorm, snatched 
from a flying railway-train is better than Cheapside; 
that is all. Even those more fortunate ones who can 
pass a month at a shooting lodge in some Highland glen, 
or by some blue sea-loch, are for the most part so ab- 
sorbed in grouse-killing or deer-stalking, that they have 
seldom eye or ear for anything beside. 

Those only have a chance of knowing what the real 
Highlands are who go with hearts at leisure to see and 
to feel, and who " go all alone the while ; " some adven- 
turous wanderer, who has had the gentle hardihood to 
leave the crowded tourist-paths, with their steamers and 
hotels, and setting his face, unattended, to the wilder- 
ness, has been content to shelter for nights together be- 
neath some huge boulder-stone, or in a cave, or under 
the roof of crofter, keeper, or shepherd ; or some deer- 
stalker who has lain for hours in the balloch or hill-pass, 
waiting till the antlered stag came by ; or the grouse- 
shooter, who, when wearied with a whole day's walk- 
ing, has sat down towards evening on some western hill- 
side, and watched the sun going down to the Atlantic 
Isles. At such seasons the traveller and the sportsman, 
while his eye went dreaming over the dusky waste, and 
ear and heart were awake to receive the lonely sounds 
of the desert, and to let these, and the great silence 
that encompasses them, melt into his being ; at such 
seasons it was, that he perhaps became aware how vast 
a world of unuttered poetry lies all dumb in those great 
wildernesses — poetry of which the best words of the 
best poets, who have essayed to give voice to it, are but 
a poor, inadequate echo. 

Some features of that country's scenery, and some 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 221 

human feelings and habits which it has fostered, have 
expressed themselves in songs of the native Gaelic-speak- 
ing bards, which for force and vividness no foreign 
language can equal. To succeed, however imperfectly, 
in conveying even a faint notion of this Gaelic poetry, 
might be serviceable in several ways. 

As modern civilization has, whether for good or evil, 
willed that all the Scottish Highlands shall be a vast 
playground or hunting-field for the rich Southron, it 
might, perhaps, be well that the Southron should know 
something more of the land and of the people amid 
which he takes his summer pastime. The character 
of the land appeals to every eye ; less apparent, but 
not less marked and interesting, is the character of the 
people, whose forefathers, ages ago, gave names to its 
mountains and glens, which they still retain. To know 
something about their native poetry might help stran- 
gers to understand better, and appreciate more highly, 
the noble qualities that lie hidden in these Scottish 
Gael. There are facts in their history, and traits in 
their character, which might benefit even the most self- 
complacent stranger, if he could learn to know and 
sympathize with them. Besides, to us here, accustomed 
to read the great standard poets and to measure all 
poetry by their model, it may be some advantage to 
turn aside and look at a poetry wholly unlike that of 
England, Rome, or Greece ; a poetry which is as spon- 
taneous as tha singing of the birds and the beating of 
men's hearts ; a poetry which is, in a great measure, 
independent of books and manuscripts ; a poetry which, 
if narrower in compass and less careful in finish, is as 
intense in feeling, and as true to nature and to man, as 
anything which the classical literatures contain. 



222 THE POETRY OF THE 

It is strange to think how long, and up to how late 
a date, the whole world of the Scottish Gael lay out- 
side of the political and the intellectual life not only of 
England, but even of their neighbors, the Scottish Low- 
landers. From the time, A. d. 1411, when on the field 
of Harlaw it was finally decided that Saxon, not Celt, 
should rule in Scotland, down to the time of Montrose 
and Claverhouse, that is for two centuries and a half, the 
Highlanders lay little heeded, within their own mount- 
ains, except when they descended in some marauding 
raid upon the Lowland plains ; or when one or another 
of the Royal Jameses plunged into the mountains to 
hang some rebellious chief, and. quell his turbulent clan. 
The first appearance of the clans in modern history took 
place when they rose in defence of the dethroned Stuarts, 
and enabled Montrose to triumph at Inverlochy, and 
Viscount Dundee at Killiecrankie. When they rose 
again, for the same cause, in the Fifteen and the Forty- 
five, especially in the latter, they so alarmed the minds 
of English politicians, that in the rebound after the vic- 
tory of Culloden these exacted from the helpless Gael 
a bloody vengeance, which is one of the darkest pages 
in England's history. During the century when the 
Gael were throwing themselves with all their native 
ardor into the political struggle, they were making no 
impression on England's literature. This was first done 
nearly twenty years after the Forty-five, when James 
MacPherson published his translation of the so-called 
Epics of Ossian. 

Of the great storm of controversy which MacPher- 
son's Ossian awakened, I shall say nothing at present. 
But whether we regard the Ossianic Poems as genuine 
productions of the ancient Gael, or fabrications of Mac- 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. . 223 

Pherson, there cannot be a doubt that in that publication 
the Gael for the first time put in their claim to be recog- 
nized on the field, not only of England's but of Europe's 
literature. Henceforth Highland scenery and Celtic 
feeling entered as a conscious element into the poetry of 
England and of other nations, and touched them with 
something of its peculiar sentiment. How real and pene- 
trating this influence was, hear in the eloquent words of 
Mr. Arnold in his suggestive lectures on Celtic Litera- 
ture. " The Celts are the prime authors of this vein of 
piercing regret and passion, of this Titanism in poetry. 
A famous book, MacPherson's Ossian, carried in the last 
century this vein like a flood of lava through Europe. 
I am not going to criticise MacPherson's Ossian here. 
Make the part of what is forged, modern, tawdry, spu- 
rious, in the book, as large as you please ; strip Scot- 
land, if you like, of every feather of borrowed plumes 
which, on the strength of MacPherson's Ossian, she may 
have stolen from that vetus et major Scotia — Ireland ; 
I make no objection. But there will still be left in the 
book a residue with the very soul of the Celtic genius 
in it ; and which has the proud distinction of having 
brought this soul of the Celtic genius into contact with 
the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our 
poetry by it. "Woody Morven, and echoing Lora, and 
Selma with its silent halls ! We all owe them a debt 
of gratitude, and when we are unjust enough to forget 
it, may the Muse forget us ! Choose any one of the 
better passages in MacPherson's Ossian, and you can 
see, even at this time of day, what an apparition of 
newness and of power such a strain must have been in 
the eighteenth century." 

In his work on The Study of Celtic Literature, from 



224 THE POETRY OF THE 

which I have just quoted, Mr. Arnold lays his finger 
with his peculiar felicity on the Celtic element which 
exists in the English nature, and shows how it is the 
dash of Celtic blood in English veins, which has given 
to it some of its finest, if least recognized, quality ; 
how the commingling of Celtic sentiment and sensibil- 
ity with Saxon steadiness and method has leavened our 
literature. I know nothing finer in criticism than the 
subtle and admirable tact with which he traces the way 
in which the presence of a Celtic sentiment has height- 
ened and spiritualized the genius of our best poets, has 
added to the imagination of Shakespeare a magic 
charm, not to be found even in the finest words of 
Goethe. This line of thought, true and interesting as 
it is, has reference to the unconscious influence of the 
Celtic spirit on Englishmen, who never once, perhaps, 
thought or cared for anything Celtic. It would be a 
humbler and more obvious task to trace how the direct 
and conscious infiltration of the Celtic genius, from the 
time of MacPherson's Ossian, has told on our modern 
poets. But from this I must refrain to-day ; and in 
what remains confine myself strictly to the Gael of the 
Scottish Highlands and their poetry. 

I shall not venture to speak of the Celts in general, 
much less of that very abstract thing called " Celtism." 
For Celt is a wide word, which covers several very dis- 
tinct and different peoples. What is true of the poetry 
of Wales is not true of the poetry of Ireland. What 
is true of the poetry of Ireland cannot be said of the 
poetry of the Scottish Gael. In all our talk about 
Celts, let us never forget that there are two main 
branches of the great Celtic race — the Cymri and the 
Gael. Each of the two great branches had its own dis- 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 225 

tinct cycle of legends — or myths, if you choose — on 
which were founded their earliest heroic songs or bal- 
lads. The story of Arthur and his knights sprang from 
the Cymri, and had its root probably in some vicissitudes 
of their early history, when the Saxons invaded their 
country and drove them to the western shores of Brit- 
ain. Latin chroniclers and French minstrels, at a later 
day, took up the story of their doings, and handed it 
on, transformed in character, and invested with all the 
hues of mediaeval chivalry. It is, in fact, an old Cym- 
ric legend, seen by us through the haze which centuries 
of chivalric sentiment have interposed. But, however 
transfigured, vestiges of the Arthurian story linger to 
this day in all lands where descendants of the Cymri 
still dwell — in Brittany, in Cornwall, in Wales, in the 
old Cymric kingdom of Strath-Clyde. Merlin lies bur- 
ied at Drummelzier-on-Tweed ; Guenevre at Meigle, 
close to the foot of the so-called Grampians ; Arthur's 
most northern battle was fought, according to Mr. 
Skene, near the foot of Loch Lomond. But there all 
traces of Arthur cease ; beyond the Highland line he 
never penetrated. 

That Highland line, namely the mountain barrier 
which stretches from Ben Lomond in a northeastern 
direction to the Cairngorms and the Deeside Mountains, 
encloses a whole world of legend as native to the Gael 
of Scotland and Ireland as the Arthurian legend is to 
the lands of the Cymri. Where Arthur's story ends, 
that of Fion and his Feinne begins. 

Within that mountain barrier, all the Highlands of 

Perthshire, Inverness-shire, and Argyll are fragrant 

with memories of an old heroic race, called the Feinne, 

or Fianntainean. Not a glen, hardly a mountain, but 

15 



226 THE POE^TMY OF THE 

contains some rock, or knoll, or cairn, or cave, named 
from the Fenian warriors, whose memories people those 
mountains like a family of ghosts. The language of the 
native Gael abounds with allusions to them ; their names 
are familiar in proverbs used at this hour. 

Who were these Feinne ? To what age do they be- 
long ? Mr. Skene, our highest authority on all Celtic 
matters, replies that they were one of those races which 
came from Lochlan, and preceded the Milesian Scots, 
both in Erin and in Alban. Lochlan is the most ancient 
name of that part of North Germany which lies between 
the mouths of the Rhine and the Elbe, before the name 
was transferred to Scandinavia. From that North Ger- 
man sea-board came the earliest race that peopled Ire- 
land and Alban or the Scottish Highlands. During 
their occupation, Ireland and the north of Scotland were 
regarded as one territory, and the population passed 
freely from one island to the other at a time " when 
race, not territory, was the great bond of association." 
Hence it came that the deeds and memories of this one 
warrior race belong equally to both countries. Each 
has its songs about the Fenian heroes ; each has its 
local names taken from these, its. " Fenian topography." 
The question, therefore, often agitated, whether the 
Fenian poetry belongs by right to Ireland or to Scot- 
land, is a futile one. It belongs equally to both, for it 
sprang from the doings and achievements of one warrior 
race, which occupied both lands indifferently. I leave 
Ireland to speak for itself, as it does very effectually 
through the lectures of the late Professor O'Curry, 
and other native writers. In the Western Highlands, 
to quote the words of Mr. Skene, " the mountains, 
streams, and lakes, are everywhere redolent of names 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 227 

connected with the heroes and actions of the Feinne, 
and show that a body of popular legends, whether in 
poetry or prose, arising out of these, and preserved by 
oral recitation, must have existed in the country, where 
this topography sprang up." But whether the events 
associated with particular local names originally hap- 
pened in Scotland or in Ireland must be left undeter- 
mined. 

That songs about the Feinne, which had never been 
committed to writing, had been preserved from time 
out of mind by oral recitation among the native Gael, 
no candid man who has examined the question can 
doubt. The great Dr. Johnson would not believe this 
on any evidence. But as one among innumerable wit- 
nesses tells us, * It was the constant amusment or oc- 
cupation of the Highlanders in the winter time to go by 
turns to each other's houses in every village, either to 
recite, or hear recited or sung, the poems of Ossian, and 
other songs and poems." Almost all the native Gael 
could recite some parts of these, but there were pro- 
fessed Seannachies, or persons of unusual power of 
memory, who could go on repeating Fenian poems for 
two or three whole nights continuously. I have myself 
known men who have often heard five hundred lines of 
continuous Fenian poetry recited at one time. 

A little after the middle of the last century, when 
James MacPherson began his wanderings in search of 
these songs, the Highlands were full of such Ossianic 
poetry, and of men who could recite it. I am not going 
to retail the oft-told history of MacPherson's marvellous 
proceedings, much less to plunge into the interminable 
jungle of the Ossianic controversy. Those who may 
desire to see the facts clearly stated will find this done 



228 THE POETRY OF THE 

in Mr. Skene's Introduction to the book of the Dean 
of Lismore, published in 1862, also in the very clear 
and candid Dissertation prefixed by Dr. Clerk to his 
new and literal translation of the Gaelic Ossian, pub- 
lished in 1870. A condensed view of the present state 
of the question will be found in a paper published in 
Macmxllan's Magazine for June, 1871. Since this last 
date, new contributions have been made to the subject, 
especially by the publication of Mr. J. F. Campbell's 
Booh of the Feinne, in which he advocates a view en- 
tirely opposed to that taken in the three publications 
already named. Without at all entering into the con- 
troversy, I shall just note the crucial point round which 
the whole question turns. MacPherson published in 
1762 an English translation of Fingal, an epic which 
he attributed to Ossian. The next year, 1763, he pub- 
lished Temora, another Ossianic epic. The genuineness 
of the two epics was immediately challenged. Mac- 
Pherson never published the Gaelic originals while he 
lived, but he left them in manuscripts, which after many 
vicissitudes were published by the Highland Society in 
1807. Of the Gaelic Ossian, published by the Highland 
Society, a new translation, much more literal and exact 
than MacPherson's was made by Dr. Clerk of Kilmal- 
lie, in 1870. There they now lie side by side, the 
Gaelic Ossian and the two English versions, that of 
MacPherson and that by Dr. Clerk ; and the question 
now is, which is the original, the Gaelic or the Eng- 
lish ? Mr. Skene and Dr. Clerk strongly maintain that 
the Gaelic shows undoubted signs of being the original, 
nnd the English of being a translation. These two are 
among the most eminent Gaelic scholars now alive. On 
the other hand, Mr. J. F. Campbell, an ardent collector 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 229 

of Gaelic tales and antique things, if not so critical a 
Gaelic scholar as the two former, contends as strongly 
for the English being the original, from which he says 
the Gaelic has evidently been translated. Again, sup- 
posing, with Mr. Skene and Dr. Clerk, that the Gaelic 
is the original, who composed the Gaelic? Among 
those who agree in holding the Gaelic to be the original, 
there are two divergent opinions as to the composers of 
it. Some hold that the Gaelic was mainly the compo- 
sition of MacPherson and some of his friends, who in- 
corporated into it here and there certain ancient frag- 
ments, but composed the larger portion of it themselves. 
It is further alleged that when the Gaelic had been 
thus composed, MacPherson rendered it into the stately, 
if sometimes tawdry English, which we know as Ossian. 
Others maintain that by far the larger portion of the 
Gaelic is ancient, and that MacPherson supplied only a 
few passages here and there to link together his ancient 
originals. Hardly any one, however, is prepared to 
argue that the long epics of Fingal and Temora came 
down from a remote antiquity in the exact form in 
which MacPherson published them. The piecing to- 
gether of fragments often ill-adjusted and incongruous 
is too evident to allow of such a supposition. 

The English and the Gaelic Ossian, as I said, lie be- 
fore us. Is it too much to hope that criticism may yet 
decide the question ? that some Gaelic Porson or Bent- 
ley may yet arise, who shall apply to the documents the 
best critical acumen, and pronounce a verdict which 
shall be final, as to which of the two is the original, 
which the translation ? If some one were to assert that 
\ie had discovered a lost book of Homer, and were to 
publish it with an English translation, the resources of 



230 THE POETRY OF THE 

Greek scholarship are quite competent to settle whether 
the Greek were authentic or a forgery. Why should not 
Gaelic scholarship achieve as much ? 

But even if we were to cancel all that has passed 
through MacPherson's hands, whether Gaelic or Eng- 
lish, enough still is left of Ossianic poetry, both in the 
Dean of Lismore's book, that dates from early in the 
sixteenth century, and also in the gleanings of other col- 
lectors, whose honesty has never been questioned, to 
prove that the whole Highlands were formerly saturated 
with heroic songs about the Feinne, and to enable us to 
know what were the characteristics of this Fenian po- 
etry. I believe that the last reciters of Ossianic songs 
have scarcely yet died out in the remoter Hebrides. 

Who was this Ossian, and when did he live? His 
exact date, even his century, no one can determine ; but 
fragments, which are undoubtedly genuine, refer to a 
very dim foretime, even to the centuries when Christian- 
ity was yet young, and was struggling for existence 
against old Paganism, in Erin and in Alba. 

The conception of Ossian, not only in MacPherson, 
but in the oldest fragments and in universal Highland 
tradition, is one and uniform. He is the proto-bard, the 
first and greatest of all the bards. Himself the son of 
the great Fenian king Fionn, or Finn, and a warrior in 
his youth, he survived all his kindred, and was left alone, 
blind and forlorn, with nothing, but the memories of the 
men he loved, to solace him. There he sits in his empty 
hall, with the dusky wilderness around him, listening to 
the winds that sigh through the gray cairns, and to the 
streams that roar down the mountains. No longer can 
he see the morning spread upon the hilltops, nor the 
mists as they come down upon their flanks. But in these 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 231 

mists he believes that the spirits of his fathers and his 
lost comrades dwell, and often they revisit him waking 
or in dreams. One only comfort is left him, Malvina, 
the betrothed of his hero son, Oscar, who had early fallen 
in battle ; and the best consolation she can minister 
is to raise her voice in the joy of song. As the sightless 
old man sits in the last warmth of the setting sun, the 
days of other years come back to him, and he is fain to 
sing a tale of the times of old. And his song is of his 
father Fionn, the king of the Fenians, and of his deeds 
of prowess, when he led his peers to battle against the 
invading hosts of Lochlan. Those peers were the " great 
Cuchullin with his war chariot, the brown-haired and 
beautiful Diarmid, slayer of the boar by which himself 
was slain, the strong and valiant Gaul, son of Morni, 
the rash Conan — a Celtic Thersites — the hardy Ryno, 
the swift and gallant Cailta." These all stand out be- 
fore the imagination of the Gael, as individual in their 
deeds and their characters, as did the Homeric heroes 
before the minds of the Greeks. All of them died 
before Ossian, and, most pathetic of all, Oscar, his own 
son, the pride and hope of the Feinne, died, treacher- 
ously slain in the first bloom of his youth and valor. 

As a sample of the average Ossianic style, let me give 
a few lines of one of those fragments which MacPher- 
son published in 1760. These he put forth before he 
knew they would have any literary value, and before he 
brought out his epics ; so that, as Mr. Skene says, there 
is little reason to doubt that they are genuine ancient 
fragments. The one I am about to give he afterwards 
incorporated as an episode in the first book of Fingal^ 
but this version is the literal unadorned rendering of 
Dr. Clerk. 



232 THE POETRY OF THE 

A warrior, called Du-chomar, meets a maiden, called 

Morna, alone on the hill, and thus addresses her : — 

" 'Morna, most lovely among women, 
Graceful daughter of Cormac, 
Why by thyself in the circle of stones, 
In hollow of the rock, on the hill alone ? 
Streams are sounding around thee ; 
The aged tree is moaning in the wind; 
Trouble is on yonder loch ; 
Clouds darken round the mountain tops ; 
Thyself art like snow on the hill — 
Thy waving hair like mist of Cromla, 
Curling upwards on the Ben, 
'Neath gleaming of the sun from the west; 
Thy soft bosom like the white rock 
On bank of Brano of foaming streams.' 

" Then said the maid of loveliest locks, 
' Whence art thou, grimmest among men ? 
Gloomy always was thy brow ; 
Red is now thine eye, and boding ill. 
Sawest thou Swaran on the ocean ? 
What hast thou heard about the foe ? " 

He replies that he has seen or heard nothing, and then 

goes on : — 

" ' Cormac's daughter of fairest mien, 
As my soul is my love to thee.' 

'Du-chomar,' said the gentle maiden, 
'No spark of love have I for thee ; 

Dark is thy brow, darker thy spirit; 

But unto thee, son of Amain, my love, 

Brave Cabad, Morna cleaves to thee. 

Like gleaming of the sun are thy locks, 

When rises the mist of the mountain. 

Has Cabad, the prince, been seen by thee, 

Young gallant, travelling the hills ? 

The daughter of Cormac, hero brave, 

Waits the return of her love from the chase." 

" 'Long shalt thou wait, Morna,' 
Said Du-chomar, dark and stern — 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 233 

'Long shalt thou wait, O Morna, 
For the fiery son of Armin. 
Look at this blade of cleanest sweep — 
To its very hilt sprang Cabad's blood. 
The strong hero has fallen by ray hand; 
Long shalt thou wait, Morna. 
I will raise a stone o'er thy beloved. 
Daughter of Cormac of blue shields, 
Bend on Du-chomar thine eye ; 
His hand is as thunder of the mountains.' 

" Has the son of Armin fallen in death? ' 
Exclaimed the maiden with voice of love. 
4 Has he fallen on the mountain high, 
The brave one, fairest of the people? 
Leader of the strong ones in the chase, 
Foe, with cleaving blows for ocean strangers ? 
Dark is Du-chomar in his wrath ; 
Bloody to me is thy hand ; 
Mine enemy thou art, but reach me the. sword — 
Dear to me is Cabad and his blood.' " 

He gives her the sword, she plunges it in his breast. 
Falling, he entreats her to draw the sword from his 
wound. As she approaches he slays her. 

One of the standing arguments used by Dr. Johnson 
anci others to prove that MacPherson's Ossian was a 
shameless imposture was the generosity of heart, the 
nobility of nature, and the refined and delicate senti- 
ment, attributed in these poems to Fingal and his com- 
rades ; if they lived when they were said to have lived, 
they must, it was alleged, have been ferocious savages. 
This, no doubt, was a natural objection. But one fact 
is worth a world of such hypotheses. Here is the 
description of Finn, as it is found in one of the frag- 
ments of Ossianic song, about which no doubt can be 
raised, for it has been preserved in the book of the 
Dean of Lismore, and that was written about A. D. 1520. 
The fragment when thus written down by the Dean was 



234 THE POETRY OF THE 

attributed to Ossian, who then was reckoned a poet of 
unknown antiquity. The following is the bare literal 
translation of it: — 

"Both poet and chief, 
Braver than kings, 
Firm chief of the Feinne, 
Lord of all lands. 
Foremost always, 
Generous, just, 
Despising a lie. 
Of vigorous deeds 
First in song, 
A righteous judge, 
Polished in mien, 
Who knew but victory. 
All men's trust, 
Of noble mind, 
Of ready deeds, 
To women mild. 
Three hundred battles 
He bravely fought. 
With miser's mind 
Withheld from none. 
Anything false 
His lips never spake. 
He never grudged, 
No, never, Finn, 
The sun ne'er saw king 
Who him excelled. 
Good man was Finn, 
Good man was he ; 
No gifts were given 
Like his so free." 

This may not be very fine poetry, but it is an image 
of noble manhood. 

As a sample of an Ossianic battle-picture, take the 
well-known description of the chariot of Cuchullin. The 
passage has by MacPherson been incorporated into his 
first book of Fingal, but later authorities refer it to a 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 235 

different era and cycle of events. However this may 
be, there is no doubt that the passage is very ancient, 
for it has been recovered from old Highlanders, who 
never read a word of MacPherson's Ossian, nor heard 
of it. I give the translation, not of MacPherson, but 
the much more literal one lately done by Dr. Clerk. 

Swaran, King of Lochlan (Scandinavia), has invaded 
Erin, and sent forward a scout to reconnoitre, and bring 
him word of the movements of the Irish host. This is 
the description, with which the scout returns, of the 
chariot and the appearance of Cuchullin, leader of the 
warriors of Ulster : — 

" Rise, thou ruler of the waves, 
True leader of dark-brown shields, 
I see the sons of Erin and their chief, 
A chariot — the greatest chariot of war — 
Moving over the plain with death, 
The shapely swift car of Cuchullin. 
Behind, it curves downward like a wave, 
Or mist enfolding a sharp-cragged hill; 
The light of precious stones is about it, 
Like the sea in the wake of a boat at night. 
Of shining yew is the pole of it ; 
Of well-smoothed bone the seat. 
It is the dwelling-place of spears, 
Of shields, of swords, and of heroes. 

" On the right side of the great chariot 
Is seen a horse, high-mettled, snorting, 
Lofty-crested, broad-chested, dark, 
High-bounding, strong-bodied son of the mountain, 
Springy, and sounding his hoof ; 
The spread of his forelock on high 
Is like mist on the dwelling of deer; 
Shining his coat, and swift 
His pace — Si-fadda his name. 

" On the other side of the car 
Is an arch-necked snorting horse : 



236 THE POETRY OF THE 

Thin-maned, free-striding, deep-hoofed, 

Swift-footed, wide-nostrelled son of the mountain, 

Du-sron-gel the name of the gallant steed. 

Full a thousand slender thongs 

Fasten the chariot on high ; 

The hard bright bit of the bridle 

In their jaws is covered white with foam, 

Shining stones of power 

Wave aloft with the horses' manes — 

Horses like mist on the mountain side, 

Which onward bear the chief to his fame. 

Keener their temper than the deer, 

Strong as the eagle their strength, 

Their noise is like winter fierce 

On Gormal smothered in snow. 

" In the chariot is seen the chief, 
True, brave son of the keen-cutting brand, 
Cuchullin of blue-dappled shields, 
Son of Semo, renowned in song. 
His cheek like the polished yew ; 
Clear, far-ranging his eye, 
Under arched, dark, and slender brow ; 
His yellow hair, down-streaming from his head, 
Falls round the glorious face of the man, 
As he draws his spear from his back." 

Then addressing Swaran, the scout exclaims — 

" Flee thou great ruler of ships, 
Flee from the hero who comes right on, 
As a storm from the glen of torrents." 

If any one were carefully to compare Dr. Clerk's 
version just given with that of MacPherson, he could 
not fail to observe that, whenever they differ, the former 
is more exact and graphic, preserving all the edges, 
whereas the latter is vague, less definite, more declama- 
tory. And this, as far as I have observed, is character- 
istic of MacPherson's translations throughout. He at- 
iains rhythmical flow, stateliness, sometimes sublimity, 
of language ; but for these he sacrifices the realistic 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 237 

force, the sharpness of outline, and the vivid exactness 
which belong to the Gaelic, and are faithfully preserved 
in Dr. Clerk's rendering. If this is true, it has a very- 
close bearing on the question whether MacPherson's 
English or his Gaelic Ossian is the original. 

Perhaps I ought to refrain from quoting, or even 
from alluding to, a passage so familiar to all readers of 
Ossian as the address or hymn to the Sun. But it is 
so remarkable in itself, and is of such undoubted antiq- 
uity, having been recovered from many other sources 
besides MacPherson, that I shall venture to presume on 
the ignorance of at least some of my readers, and once 
more to quote it. 

Dr. Clerk's literal, word for word, translation of it 
runs thus — 

" O thou that travellest on high 
Eound as the warrior's hard full shield, 
Whence thy brightness without gloom, 
Thy light that is lasting, sun ! 
Thou comest forth strong in thy beauty, 
And the stars conceal their path; 
The moon, all pale, forsakes the sky, 
To hide herself in the western wave ; 
Thou, in thy journey, art alone; 
Who will dare draw nigh to thee ? 
The oak falls from the lofty crag; 
The rock falls in crumbling decay ; 
Ebbs and flows the ocean ; 
The moon is lost aloft in the heaven ; 
Thou alone dost, triumph evermore, 
In gladness of light all thine own. 

" When tempest blackens round the world, 
In fierce thunder and dreadful lightning, 
Thou, in thy beauty, lookest forth on the storm, 
Laughing mid the uproar of the skies. 
To me thy light is vain, 
Never more shall I see thy face, 



238 THE POETRY OF THE 

Spreading thy waving golden-yellow hair, 
In the east on the face of the clouds, 
Nor when thou tremblest in the west, 
At thy dusky doors, on the ocean. 

"And perchance thou art even as I, 
At seasons strong, at seasons without strength, 
Our years, descending from the sky, 
Together hasting to their close. 
Joy be upon thee then, sun ! 
Since, in thy youth, thou art strong, chief." 

This hymn to the Sun marks the highest pitch 
reached by the Ossianic poetry ; if I may venture to say 
so, only a little below the description of the sun in the 
19th Psalm. 

That sensitiveness to the powers of nature said to be 
characteristic of the Celtic race appears very impress- 
ively stamped on the Ossianic remains. One might go 
on quoting, by the hour, passages in which the old poet, 
or poets, have rendered the changing aspects of the 
mountains, the ocean, and the sky. But, instead of 
this, I shall give a specimen from a poem which be- 
longs to an older legend even than any of the Fenian 
cycle. 

The subject of it is this. There was in Ulster a cer- 
tain Deirdre, the most beautiful woman of her time — 
a Celtic Helen, only as faithful as Helen of Troy was 
faithless. Conor, King of Ulster, loved her, but she 
preferred Naisi, one of his chiefs ; and Naisi married 
Deirdre, and fled with his two brothers and many of his 
clan to the coast of Argyll. A long time they lived 
there in happiness, these three sons of Uisnach, with 
their people, and Naisi and Deirdre were supreme among 
them. At length Conor summoned them back to Erin, 
and they, by some spell, felt constrained to return. 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 239 

The king, finding that Deirdre was as beautiful as ever, 
treacherously slew her husband and his brothers, but 
Deirdre would not yield, and died, it is said, on the 
grave of the sons of Uisnach. 

The following poem is her lament, as she sailed away 
to Erin, and looked back on the lovely shores of Argyll, 
which she felt she had left forever : — 

" Beloved land, that Eastern land, 
Alba with its wonders, 
O that I might not depart from it, 
But that I go with Naisi. 



" Glen Massan, Glen Massan ! 
High its herbs, fair its boughs, 
Solitary was the place of our repose 
On grassy Invermassan. 

" Glen Etive ! Glen Etive ! 
There Avas raised my earliest home. 
Beautiful its woods at sunrise, 
When the sun struck on Glen Etive. 

" Glen Urchay ! Glen Urchay ! 
The straight glen of smooth ridges. 
No man of his age was more joyful 
Than Naisi in Glen Urchay. 

" Glendaruadh ! O Glendaruadh ! 
Each man who dwells there I love. 
Sweet the voice of the cuckoo on bending bough, 
On the hill above Glendaruadh. 

" Beloved is Draighen and its sounding shore, 
Beloved the water over the clear pure sands. 
that I might not depart from the east, 
Unless I go with my beloved." 

All the places here mentioned are well-known scenes 
in Argyll, beloved to this day by the natives — pleasant 
memories to many a stranger. This is the earliest poem 



240 THE POETRY OF THE 

which celebrates the beauty of those West Highland 
shores, and it is said to be one of the oldest poems in 
the Gaelic tongue. It is found in a manuscript of the 
year 1238, and who can say how long before that it had 
travelled down, living only on the lips of men ? 

I wish I could go on to give more specimens of this 
ancient poetry, for there are many more to give. This 
only must be said : that the people who in a rude age 
could create poetry like that, and could so love it as to 
preserve it from generation to generation in their mem- 
ories, merit surely some better fate than the contempt 
and ill-treatment they have too often received from their 
prosaic Saxon neighbors. 

I have throughout indicated that I regard the body of 
Ossianic poetry, which belongs to the Scottish High- 
lands, and partly also to Ireland, as a genuine ancient 
growth. Even were we to set down all that MacPher- 
son published as fabricated by himself, we should still 
have in the fragments preserved in the Dean of Lis- 
more's book, in those collected by the Highland Society, 
and in pieces gathered by other collectors of undoubted 
veracity, enough to prove that it belonged to a remote 
antiquity. How remote I do not venture to say, only I 
am inclined to believe that it belonged to a- time far 
back beyond the mediaeval age. Neither have I said a 
word as to the existence of one Ossian. 

Mr. Skene has distinguished three separate and suc- 
cessive stages in the creation of this poetry. At each 
stage it assumed a different form. In its oldest form 
there are pure poems of a heroic character, each poem 
complete in itself, and formed on a metrical system of 
alliteration and of rhyme, or correspondence of vowels. 
For the other two forms I must refer to Mr. Skene's 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 241 

Introduction. The poems of the oldest form are at- 
tributed to one mythic poet ; but, whether one or many, 
it is natural to suppose that there must originally have 
been one master-spirit, who struck the key-note of a 
poetry containing so much that was original, exalted, 
and unique. 

What the characteristic faults of the Gael are, we 
have been well told by Dr. Arnold, and many other 
writers. It is more to our purpose now to note their 
characteristic excellences, as these appear in their native 
poetry. 

The exquisite, penetrating sensibility which has been 
so often noted as the basis of Celtic character is fully 
reflected in these Ossianic poems. Quickness to see, 
quickness to feel, lively perceptions, deep, overpowering, 
all-absorbing emotions, these, the exact opposite of the 
Saxon temperament, tough, heavy, phlegmatic, are no- 
where more conspicuous than in the Scottish Gael, and 
in that early poetry which rose out of their deepest 
nature, and has since powerfully reacted on it. This 
liveliness of eye and sensitiveness of heart have been 
noted as main elements of genius, and no doubt they 
are. 

One side of their sensibility is great openness to joy 
— a sprightly, vivacious nature, loving dance and song. 
The other side is equal openness to melancholy, to de- 
spondency. Gleams intensely bright, glooms profoundly 
dark, exaltations, depressions — these are the staple of 
the Gael's existence, and of his poetry. 

Turned on human life, this high-toned sensibility 
makes the Gael, in poetry as well as in practice, venerate 
heroes, cling to the heroic through all vicissitudes ; 
though the heroes fall, die, and disappear, still he re- 



242 THE POETRY OF THE 

mains faithful to their memories, loves these, and only 
these. This fervid devotion to the memory of all the 
Fenian warriors whom he had known is a character- 
istic note in Ossian, but it becomes quite a passionate 
tenderness towards " the household hearts that were his 
own," towards his father Fion, his brother Fillan, his 
son Oscar. The laments he pours over this latter ex- 
ceed in their piercing tenderness anything in Greek or 
Roman poetry, and recall some Hebrew strains. 

These feelings of devotion to their chiefs, and tenacity 
of affection to their kindred, which we find in their most 
ancient poetry, reappear in the Gael throughout all their 
history, down to the present hour. 

Again, this same sensibility made a lofty ideal of life 
quite natural to the Gael, even before Christianity had 
reached him ; made his heart open to admire the gen- 
erous and the noble, and imparted a peculiar delicacy 
to his sentiments, and courtesy to his manners, — quali- 
ties which, even after all he has undergone, have not yet 
forsaken him. These qualities enter largely into the 
Ossianic ideal. It is wonderful how free from all gross- 
ness these poems are, how great purity pervades them. 
There is, of course, the dark side to this picture : feroc- 
ity of vengeance when enraged, recklessness of human 
life. As the counterpart of his devotion to the high and 
the heroic is the Gael's aversion to the commonplace 
routine of life ; his contempt for the mechanical trades 
and arts. To this day the native Gael in his own glens 
thinks all occupations but that of the soldier, the hunter, 
and, perhaps, the shepherd, unworthy of him. He carries 
down to the present hour something of the Ossianic 
conception, which recognizes only the warrior and the 
hunter. 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 243 

Turned upon nature, their open sensibility is quick to 
seize the outward aspect of things, but does not rest 
there, cannot be satisfied with a homely realism ; is not 
even content with the picturesque appearances, but pen- 
etrates easily, rapidly, to the secret of the object, finds 
its affinity to the soul ; in fact, spiritualizes it. This is 
that power of natural magic, which Mr. Arnold makes 
so much of in his book on Celtic literature. The im- 
pressionable Gael was, from the earliest time, greatly 
under the power of the ever-changing aspects of earth 
and sky. The bright side is in his poetry ; the sunrise 
on the mountains, the sunset on the ocean, the softness 
of moonlight, all are there touched with exceeding del- 
icacy. But more frequently still in Ossian, as befitted 
his country and his circumstances, the melancholy side 
of nature predominates. His poetry is full of natural 
images taken straight from the wilderness ; the brown 
heath, the thistle-down on the autumn air, the dark 
mountain cairns, the sighing winds, the movements of 
mist and clouds, silence and solitude — these are for- 
ever recurring in impressive monotone. Even to this 
day, when one is alone in the loneliest places of the 
Highlands, in the wilderness where no man is, on the 
desolate moor of Rannoch, or among the gray boulders 
of Badenoch, — when 

"the loneliness 
Loadeth the heart, the desert tires the eye " — 

at such a time, if one wished a language to express the 
feeling that weighs upon the heart, where would one 
turn to find it ? Not to Scott ; not even to Words- 
worth — though the power of hills was upon him, if 
upon any modern. Not in these, but in the voice of 
Cona alone would the heart find a language that would 



244 THE POETRY OF THE 

relieve it. It is this fact, that there is something which 
is of the very essence of the Highland glens and mount- 
ains, something unexpressed by any modern poet, but 
which the old Ossianic poetry alone expresses ; this, 
if nothing else, would convince me that the poetry 
which conveys this feeling is no modern fabrication, 
but is native to the hills, connatural, I had almost 
said, with the granite mountains among which it has 
survived. 

Lastly, this sadness of tone in describing nature is 
still more deeply apparent, when the Gaelic poet touches 
on the destiny of his race. That race, high-spirited, 
impetuous, war-loving, proud, once covered a great por- 
tion of Europe. As one has said, it shook all empires, 
but founded none. For ages it has been pushed west- 
ward before a younger advancing race, till for many 
ages the Gael has retained only the westernmost prom- 
ontories and islands. To these they still cling, as lim- 
pets cling to their rocks ; and they feel, as they gaze 
wistfully on the Atlantic ocean, that beyond it the ma- 
jority of their race has already gone, and that they, the 
remnant, are doomed soon to follow, or to disappear. 

" Cha till, cha till, cha till mi tuille." 
" I return, I return, I return no more." 

This is the feeling deepest in the heart of the modern 
Gael ; this is the mournful, ever-recurring undertone of 
the Ossianic poetry. It is the sentiment of a despairing 
and disappearing race, a sentiment of deeper sadness, 
than any the prosperous Saxon can know. 

Two facts are enough to convince me of the genuine- 
ness of the ancient Gaelic poetry. The truthfulness 
with which it reflects the melancholy aspects of High- 
land scenery, the equal truthfulness with which it ex- 



SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. 245 

presses the prevailing sentiment of the Gael, and his 
sad sense of his people's destiny. I need no other 
proofs that the Ossianic poetry is a native formation, 
and comes from the primeval heart of the Gaelic race. 



CHAPTER X. 

MODERN GAELIC BARDS AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 

To those who feel that poetry is a thing older than 
all manuscripts and books, and that in its essence it is 
independent of these, it is I know not how refreshing 
to turn from the poetry that is confined to books to the 
song-lore of the Gael. They find there a poetry which, 
both in its ancient and in its modern forms, was the 
creation of men who were taught in no school but that 
of nature ; who could neither read nor write their na- 
tive Gaelic ; who, many of them, never saw a book or 
a manuscript; who had no other model than the old 
primeval Ossianic strains which they had heard from 
childhood; and who, when inborn passion prompted, 
sang songs of natural and genuine inspiration. What 
they composed they never thought of committing to 
writing, for writing was to them an art unknown. The 
great body of Highland poetry, both in old and in 
modern times, has come down to us preserved mainly 
by oral tradition. This is a fact which can be proved, 
let learned criticism say what it will. I have already 
spoken of that great primitive background of heroic 
songs and ballads, known as the Ossianic poetry, which 
had lived for centuries only on the lips of men, before 
it was committed to writing. That was the nurse and 
school by which all after Gaelic poets were formed. 
To-day let us turn to the post-Ossianic, or modern 



MODERN GAELIC BARDS. 247 

poetry of the Gael, which reaches from the middle age 
almost down to our own time. 

" In a land of song like the Highlands," says one who 
knew well what he spoke of, " every strath, glen, and 
hamlet had its bard. In the morning of my days," he 
goes on to say, writing in 1841, "it was my happy lot 
to inhale the mountain air of a sequestered spot, whose 
inhabitants may be designated children of song, in a 
state of society whose manners were little removed from 
that of primitive simplicity. I had many opportunities 
of witnessing the influence of poetry over the mind, and 
I found that cheerfulness and song, music and morality, 
walked almost always hand in hand." Making allow- 
ance for the warmth of feeling with which a man looks 
back on a childhood spent among the mountains, these 
words are, I believe, true. One may be forgiven if one 
doubts, whether School Boards and the Code with its six 
Standards, which have superseded this state of things, 
and are doing their best to stamp out the small remains 
of Gaelic poetry, are wholly a gain. 

The writer from whom I have quoted, Mr. John Mac- 
kenzie, was a native of the west coast of Ross, to whom 
those who still cherish Gaelic poetry owe a great debt ; 
for in 1841 he published his Beauties of Gaelic Poetry, 
which is a collection of the best pieces of the best 
modern Gaelic bards. They are but a sample of what 
might have been dug from a vast quarry, but they are a 
good sample. In many cases he had to gather the poems 
of some of the best bards, not from any edition of their 
works, or even from manuscripts, but from the recitation 
of old people, who preserved them in memory. Mac- 
kenzie's book contains more than thirty thousand lines 
of poetry on all kinds of subjects, from the long heroic 
chant about 



248 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 



down to the 



" Old unhappy far off things, 
And battles long ago ! " 

"More humble la} r , 
Familiar matter of to-day." 



To this book and its contents I shall confine myself, 
while speaking of the modern poetry of the Gael. 

The book is divided into three parts. First, a few 
poems of the mediaeval time, which form a sort of link 
between the Ossianic and the modern poetry. The 
second, and by far the largest part, consists of the poems 
of well-known bards from the Reformation down to the 
present century. The names of these are given with 
their works, and with some account of their lives. The 
third portion consists of short popular songs well known 
among the people, but without the name of the authors 
attached to them. 

Of the early or pre-Reformation poems given by 
Mackenzie, two only seem to be of undoubted antiquity, 
one a poem called The Owl, and another, The Aged 
Bard's Wish. In the former, an old hunter, who is ill- 
treated by his young wife, and is turned by her out of 
doors at night, tells all his grievances to an owl. The 
most interesting thing about it is the mention he makes 
of all the mountain places, where he used in happier 
days to hunt the wolf or the deer. Singing four hun- 
dred years ago, he mentions the mountains that cluster 
round Ben Nevis, and the waterfalls by Loch Treig, by 
the same names which they bear to-day. The other an 
cient poem, called The Aged Bard's Wish, is of unknown 
date, but certainly belongs to the pre-Reformation pe- 
riod. It is beautiful in its composition, melodious in its 
language, and pervaded not at all by the spirit of the 
warrior, and only in a slight degree by that of i\w. 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 249 

hunter, but rather by the pastoral sentiment. This is 
a distinct advance on the poems of the Ossianic era. 
Here are some stanzas from Mackenzie's literal prose 
translation, and these will show its tone: — 

" Oh, lay me near the brooks, which slowly move with gentle 
steps ; under the shade of the budding branches lay my head, and 
be thou, sun, in kindness Avith me. . . . 

"I see Ben-Aid of beautiful curve, chief of a thousand hills; the 
dreams of stags are in his locks, his head in the" bed of clouds. 

"I seen Scorn-eilt on the brow of the glen, where the cuckoo first 
raises her tuneful voice ; and the beautiful green hill of the thousand 
pines, of herds, of roes, and of elks. 

"Let joyous ducklings swim swiftly on the pool of tall pines. A 
6trath of green firs is at its head, bending the red rowans over its 
banks. 

" Let the swan of the snowy bosom glide on the top of the waves. 
When she soars on high among the clouds she will be unencumbered. 

" She travels oft over the sea to the cold region of foaming billows ; 
where never shall sail be spread out to a mast, nor an oaken prow 
divide the wave. . . . 

" Farewell, lovely company of youth ! and you, beautiful maiden, 
farewell. I cannot see you. Yours is the joy of summer; my winter 
is everlasting. 

"Oh, place me within hearing of the great waterfall, where it de- 
scends from the rock; let a harp and a shell be by my side, and the 
shield that defended my forefathers in battle. 

" Come friendlily over the sea, soft breeze, that movest slowly, 
bear my shade on the wind of thy swiftness, and travel quickly to the 
Isle of Heroes, 

"Where those who went of old are in deep slumber, deaf to the 
6ound of music. Open the hall where dwell Ossian and Daol. The 
night shall come, and the Bard shall not be found." 

Several things about this poem are noteworthy. Here 
you have a vein of fine and delicate sentiment in a Gae- 
lic poem composed centuries before MacPherson ap- 
peared. Then observe that, though pastoral life has 
come in, Christianity is yet unknown, or, at least, nn- 
believed by this dweller beside Loch Treig. His desire 
is that his harp, a shell full of wine, and his ancestni] 



250 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

shield should be laid by his side ; and then that his soul, 
which he believed to be of the nature of wind, should 
be borne by its kindred winds, not to heaven, but to 
Flath-Innis, the Isle of the Brave, the Celtic Paradise, 
where Ossian and Daol are. Lastly, note the peculiar 
love of nature, and that magical charm with which it is 
touched. 

Of those thirty bards, whose poems Mackenzie has 
preserved, I might give the names and a few facts about 
the lives and compositions of each ; but this, which is all 
I could do within my prescribed space, would not greatly 
edify any one. I might tell you of Mary MacLeod, the 
nurse of five chiefs of MacLeod, and the poetess of her 
clan ; of Ian Loin MacDonald, the first Jacobite bard, 
who led Montrose and his army to Inverlochy, pointed 
out the camping ground of the Campbells, then mounted 
the ramparts, watched the battle, and sang a fiery paean 
for the victory ; of Alastair MacDonald, the second 
great Jacobite bard, who joined Prince Charlie's army, 
shared his disaster, and preserved the memory of that 
time in songs of fervid Jacobite devotion. 

But I should do little good by giving you merely 
bare lists of names, facts, and a few notions, about Rob 
Donn, or Mackay, the poet of the Reay Country, a bit- 
ter and powerful satirist ; about Dougal Buchanan, the 
earnest and solemn religious poet of Rannoch ; and 
William Ross, the sweet lyrist of Gairloch in Ross, and 
many more. 

If any one desires to know further about these bards 
of the Gael, let me refer him to the brief biographies 
given of each of them, in the book I have already 
spoken of, Mackenzie's Beauties of Gaelic Poetry, and. 
also to the very animated commentary on the contents 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 251 

of that book, contained in Professor Blackie's interest- 
ing work on The Language and Literature of the Scot- 
tish Highlands. 

One characteristic of these Gaelic bards must be 
mentioned. They were most of them satirists as well 
as lyrists and eulogists. It was a true instinct which 
made the Chief of MacLeod forbid his poetic nurse to 
siug praises of himself and his family, for he said the 
bard who is free to praise is also free to blame. Enthu- 
siastic admiration and love have as their other side 
equal vehemence of hatred. And this bitter side of 
the poetic nature found full vent in the poetry of many 
Highland bards. Biting wit, invectives often exceeding 
all bounds — these, but not humor, characterize the 
Gael. Humor, which is a quieter, more kindly quality, 
generally comes from men fatter, better fed, in easier 
circumstances than most of the Highland poets were. 
Satire abounds in both the MacDonalds, above all in 
Rob Donn, who carries it often to coarseness. It is 
not wanting in the kindlier nature of the poet of whom 
I shall now speak ; for I think I cannot do better than 
take as a sample of the whole Bardic brotherhood one 
whom I have most studied, and who is, I believe, rec- 
ognized as among the very foremost, if not quite the 
foremost, of the Highland minstrels. 

Any one who of late years has travelled by the banks 
of Loch Awe must have remarked by the wayside, a 
short distance above Dalmally, a monument of rude 
unhewn stones cemented together. It stands very near 
the spot where, as his sister tells, Wordsworth, in his 
famous tour, first caught sight across the loch of the 
ruined Castle of Kilchurn, and shouted out impromptu 
the first three lines of his Address to the Castle — 



252 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

" Child of loud-throated war, the mountain stream 
Roars in thy hearing, but thine hour of rest 
Is come, and thou art silent in thine age." 

That monument has been raised to the memory of the 
Bard of Glenorcby, Duncan Maclntyre, or " Donacha 
Ban nan Oran," Fair Duncan of the Songs, as he is 
familiarly called by his Highland countrymen. If ever 
poet was a pure son of nature, this man was. Born in 
a lonely place, called Druimliaghart (pronounced Drum- 
liarst), on the skirts of the Monadh Dhu, or the Forest 
of the Black Mount, of poor parents, he never went to 
school, never learnt to read or write, could not speak 
English, knew but one language, his own native Gaelic. 
His only school was the deer forest, in which he spent 
his boyhood. His lessons were catching trout and 
salmon with his fishing rod, shooting grouse and stalk- 
ing deer with his gun. His mental food was the songs 
of the mountains, especially the great oral literature of 
the Ossianic minstrelsy. He tells us that he got "a 
part of his nursing " at the shealings ; and I remember 
once, in a walk through the mountains of the Black 
Forest, beside a grass-covered road that leads down to 
Loch Etive, having the ruins of a shealing both pointed 
out to me in which Duncan Ban used to spend his early 
summers. Those shealing times, when the people from 
the glens drove their black cattle and a few small sheep 
to pasture for the summer months on the higher Bens, 
are still looked back to by the Highlanders as their 
great season of happiness, romance, and song. With 
the shealings for his summer, Drumliarst for his winter 
home, Duncan had just reached manhood when the ris- 
ing of the clans and the Forty-five broke out. Like all 
true Highlanders, his heart was with the Stuarts, but, 



AND DUNCAN MAC1NTYRE. 253 

as he lived on the lands of the Earl of Breadalbane, he 
was obliged to serve on the Hanoverian side, as a sub- 
stitute for a neighboring Tacksman. This man supplied 
Duncan with a sword, which, in the rout of Falkirk, 
Duncan treated as Horace did his shield, and either lost 
or flung away. His earliest poem was composed on this 
battle, and in it he describes with evident relish the 
disgraceful retreat, hinting that, had he been on the 
Prince's side, he would have fought with more manhood. 
The man for whom Duncan served as a substitute re- 
fused to pay the sum promised, because the sword had 
been lost ; so the bard took his revenge by writing a 
satiric poem on the sword and its owner. Fletcher, 
for that was the man's name, fell upon the poet and 
thrashed him with his walking-stick, telling him to go 
and make a song upon that. But Duncan had a friend 
in the Breadalbane of the day, who came to his aid, and 
forced Fletcher to pay down the money to the man who 
had risked his life on his account. This first poem soon 
became known, and made Duncan famous, and Fletcher 
despised. 

Early in life the bard married a young girl of some- 
what higher station and richer parents than himself. 
There is nothing more pleasing in the loves of any of 
the poets than this courtship. In a beautiful lyric called 
Mairi Bhan-og, or " Fair young Mary," he tells how he 
wooed and won her. Her home was within less than 
a mile from his own, but their conditions in life were so 
different, that for long he despaired. Her father was 
baron bailiff, or under factor, and a freeholder, and she 
had some cows and calves of her own for a dowry. He 
was the son of poor people, and had no patrimony. He 
tells how he used from his own door to watch her, as 



254 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

she went about her household work, and how, when at 
last he ventured to address her, the kindness of her 
demeanor gave him confidence. After praising her 
beauty, he says, the thing that most took him was her 
firmness in good, and her manners, that were ever 
so womanly. And he concludes with a fine delicacy, 
wishing to take her away and hide her in some place, 
where decay or change might never reach her. This 
song, we are told, is regarded, " on account of its com- 
bined purity and passion, its grace, delicacy, and tender- 
ness," as the finest love song in the Gaelic language. 

After his return from soldiering, his patron, Lord 
Breadalbane, made Duncan his forester, first in Coire 
Cheathaich (pronounced Hyaich), or the Misty Corrie, 
in the forest of Maam-lorn, at the head of Glen Lochy ; 
then on Ben Doran, a beautifully-shaped hill at the head 
of Glenorchy, looking down that long glen towards 
Loch Awe. For a time, too, he served the Duke of 
Argyll, as his deer forester on the Buachaill Etie or the 
Shepherds of Etive, gnarled peaks facing towards both 
Glen Etive and Glencoe. 

Duncan has made famous Coire Cheathaich and Ben 
Doran by two of his best poems. The poem on Coire 
Cheathaich has been translated by a living poet, Mr. 
Robert Buchanan, in his book called The Land of Lome. 
His version gives a very good notion of it, with its 
minute realistic description : — 

"My beauteous corrie! where cattle wander; 
My misty corrie ! my darling dell ! 
Miglity, verdant, and covered over 
With tender wild flowers of sweetest smell ; 
Dark is the green of thy grassy clothing, 
Soft swell thy hillocks, most green and deep, 
The cannach flowing, the darnel growing, 
While the deer troop past to the misty steep." 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 255 

But of all Duncan Ban's poems the most original, the 
most elaborate, and the most- famous is that on Ben 
Doran. Tt consists of five hundred and fifty-five lines, 
and is unique in its plan and construction. It is adapted 
to a pipe tune, and follows with wonderful skill all the 
turns, and twirls, and wild cadences of the pibroch. 
It falls into eight parts, alternating with a sort of 
strophe and antistrophe, one slow, called urlar, in stately 
trochees ; another swift, called siubhal, in a kind of 
gallopping anapests. 

In Ben Doran, as in Coire Cheathaich, the bard dwells 
with the most loving minuteness on all the varied 
features and the ever-changing aspects of the mount- 
ain, which he loved as if it were a living creature and 
a friend. But besides this, in no poem on record have 
the looks, the haunts, the habits, and the manners of the 
deer, both red and roe, been pictured so accurately and 
so fondly, by one who had been born and reared among 
them, and who loved them as his chosen playmates. 

Professor Blackie has made a very spirited rendering 
into English of this most difficult poem, to which I 
would advise any one to turn who cares for poetry fresh 
from nature. I venture at present to give some pas- 
sages from a translation I made years ago, to beguile 
hours of lonely wandering among the Highland hills. 
Be it remembered, however, how different a thing is a 
wild Celtic chant, adapted to the roar and thunder of 
the bagpipe, from a literary performance meant only to 
be read by critical eyes in unexcited leisure. Here is 
the opening stave : — 

"Honor o'er all Bens 
On Bendoran be ! 
Of all hills the sun kens, 
Beantifullest he : 



256 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

Mountain long and sweeping, 
Nooks the red deer keeping, 
Light on braesides sleeping ; 

There I 've watched delightedly. 
Branchy copses cool, 
Woods of sweet grass full, 
Deer herds beautiful, 

There are dwelling aye. 
Oh ! blithe to hunting go, 

Where white-hipped stag and hind, 
Upward in long row, 

Snuff the mountain wind; 
Jaunty follows sprightly, 

With bright burnished hide, 
Dressed in fashion sightly, 

Yet all free from pride." 

The poem is, as I have said, made for a pibroch tune, 
and is, like the pibroch, full of repetitions. It returns 
again and again upon the same theme, but each time 
with variations and additions. Thus the grasses and 
plants and bushes that grow on Ben Doran are more 
than once described, as if the poet never tired of think- 
ing of them. The red-deer, sta£ and hind, with their 
ways ; the roe-deer, buck and doe, with their ways ; 
each is several times dwelt on at length. 

I shall now give a specimen of the description of each 
kind of deer. Here is a picture of the red-deer hind, 
and of the stag, her mate : — 

" Hai-k that quick darting snort! 

'T is the light-headed hind, 
With sharp-pointed nostril 

Keen searching the wind ; 
Conceited, slim-limbed, 

The high summits she keeps, 
Nor, for fear of the gun-fire, 

Descends from the steeps. 
Though she gallop at speed 

Her breath will not fail, 
For she comes of a breed 

Were strong-winded and hale. 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 257 

" When she lifteth her voice, 

What joy 't is to hear 
The ghost of her breath, 

As it echoeth clear. 
For she calleth aloud, 

From the cliff of the crag, 
Her silver-hipped lover, 

The proud antlered stag. 
Well-antlered, high-headed, 

Loud-voiced doth he come, 
From the haunts he well knows 

Of Bendoran, his home. 

" Ah ! mighty Bendoran ! 

How hard 't were to tell, 
How many proud stags 

In thy fastnesses dwell. 
How many thy slim hinds, 

Their wee calves attending, 
And, with white-twinkling tails, 

Up the Balloch ascending, 
To where Corrie-Chreetar 

Its bield is extending. 

But when the mood takes her 

To gallop with speed, 
With her slender hoof-tips 

Hardly touching the mead, 
As she stretcheth away 

In her fleet-flying might, 
What man in the kingdom 

Could follow her flight ? 
Full of gambol and gladness, 

Blithe wanderers free, 
No shadow of sadness 

Ever comes o'er their glee. 
But fitful and tricksy, 

Slim and agile of limb, 
Age will not burden them, 

Sorrow not dim. 



How gay through the glens 
Of the sweet mountain grass, 
17 



258 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

Loud sounding, all free 

From complaining, they pass. 
Though the snow come, they '11 ask 

For no roof-tree to hield them ; 
The deep Corrie Altrum, 

His rampart will shield them. 
There the rifts, and the clefts, 

And deep hollows they'll be in, 
With their well-sheltered beds 

Down in lone Aisan-teean . " 

Again, in an urlar, or slow trochaic strophe, he returns 
to the same theme — 

" ! sweet to me at rising 

In early dawn to see, 
All about the mountains, 

Where they've right to be, 
Twice a hundred there 

Of the people without care, 
Starting from their lair, 

Hale and full of glee ; 
Clear-sounding, smooth, and low, 

From their mouths the murmurs flow, 
And beautiful they go, 

As they sing their morning song. 



Sweeter to me far, 

When they begin their croon, 
Than all melodies that are 

In Erin — song or tune ; 
Than pipe or viol clear, 
More I love to hear 
The breath of the son of the deer 
Bellowing on the face 
Of Bendoran." 

Our last sample shall be the description of the roe : — 

" Mid budding sprays the doe 

Ever restless moves — 
Edge of banks and braes, 

Haunts that most she loves. 
Young leaves, fresh and sheen, 
Tips of heather green — 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 259 

Dainties fine and clean, 

Are her choice. 
Pert, coquettish, gay, 
Thoughtless, full of play, 
Creature made alway 

To rejoice. 
Maiden-like in mien 
Mostly she is seen 
In the birk-glens green 

"Where lush grasses be. 
But sometimes Crag-y-vhor, 

Gives her refuge meet, 
Sunday and Monday there 

In a still retreat. 
There bushes thick and deep 
Cluster round her sleep, 
Her all safe to keep 

From rude north-winds blowing 
In bield of Doire-chro. 
Lying down below 
The Sron's lofty brow, 

Where fresh shoots are growing: 
There well-springs clear and fine, 

With draughts more benign, 
Than ale or any wine, 

Always are flowing. 
These, as they pour, 

Their streams unfailing, 
Keep her evermore 

Fresh and free from ailiDg. 

' * Yellow hues and red, 
Delicately spread, 
On her figure shed 

Loveliness complete. 
Hardy 'gainst the cold, 
Virtues manifold, 
More than can be told, 
In her nature meet. 

At the hunter's sound 
Sudden whirling round, 
How lightly doth she bound, 



260 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

O'er rough mountain ground, 

Tar and free. 
Quicker ear to hear 
Danger drawing near, 
Fleeter flight from fear, 

In Europe cannot be." 

This long hunting pibroch, of which I have given a 
few samples, is a prime favorite with all Gaelic-speaking 
men, and is to them what such songs as Gala Water or 
the Holms of Yarrow are to the ear of the Lowlander. 
Duncan Ban will ever be remembered among his coun- 
trymen as the chief minstrel of the deer, the chase, and 
the forest. As a deer-stalker he had lived much in 
solitude, — 

"had been alone 
Amid the heart of many thousand mists." 

When he was forester on Ben Doran, in Coire Cheat- 
haich, and on Buachail Etie, the inspiration found him. 
But solitude left no shade of sadness on his spirit ; there 
is in his song nothing of the Ossianic melancholy. He 
was a blithe, hearty companion, fond of good fellow- 
ship, and several of his songs are in praise of it. But, 
though he enjoyed such things, he never lost himself in 
them. When his foresting days were over, he joined 
a volunteer regiment called the Breadalbane Fencibles, 
in which he served for six years, till it was disbanded 
in 1799. 

After his discharge from the Fencibles he migrated 
from his hills to Edinburgh, where he served for some 
time in the City Guard, which Walter Scott has de- 
scribed in one of his novels. The third edition of his 
poems was published in 1804, and in 1806 he was able 
to retire from the City Guard, and to live for the re- 
mainder of his days in comparative comfort, on the 



AND DUNCAN MA CINTYRE. 261 

return which this third edition brought him. He died 
in 1812 in Edinburgh, in his eighty-ninth year, and lies 
buried in Old Gray Friars' churchyard. 

Born at Druimliaghart, on the skirts of the Black 
Mount, at the head of Glenorchy ; laid to rest in Gray 
Friars' churchyard, Edinburgh ; beloved in life ; honored 
after death by his countrymen, who have reared a monu- 
ment to perpetuate his memory on Loch Awe side ; of 
him it may be said, as truly as of most sons of songs, 
" he sleeps well." 

Once or twice he wandered through the Highlands, 
to obtain subscriptions for a new edition of his poems. 
I knew a Highland lady who remembered to have seen 
him in her childhood on one of these occasions, when 
he visited her father's house in Mull. He was wander- 
ing about with the wife of his youth, fair young Mary, 
still fair, though no longer young. He then wore, if I 
remember aright, a tartan kilt, and on his head a cap 
made of a fox's skin. He was fair of hair and face, 
with a pleasant countenance, and a happy, attractive 
manner. An amiable, sweet-blooded man, who never, 
it is said, attacked any one, unprovoked ; but, when he 
was assailed, he could repay smartly in that satire which 
came naturally to most Highland bards. 

After he had settled in Edinburgh he paid one last 
visit to his native Glenorchy in 1802, where he found 
that those changes had already set in which have since 
desolated so many glens, and changed the whole charac- 
ter of social life in the Highlands. What he then felt he 
has recorded in one of his last and most touching poems 
entitled — 



262 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

LAST LEAVE-TAKING OF THE MOUNTAINS. 

"Yestreen I was on Ben Do ran, 

Which I had good right to know, 
I saw all the glens beneath me, 

And the Bens loved long ago. 
Bright vision it used to be, 

Walking on that mountain ground, 
When the sun was in gladness rising, 

And the deer were bellowing round. 

"Joyous the frolicsome herd, 

As they moved in their jaunt}' pride, 
While the hinds were at the cold hill-wells, 

With their dappled fawns by their side ; 
The little doe and the roe buck, 

The black cock and red grouse-bird, 
Their voices were filling the morning air — 

Sweeter melody never was heard. 

" There I passed the time of my nursing, 

At the shealings well known to me, 
With the kind-hearted maidens mingling there 

In games, and daffing, and glee. 
'T was not in the course of nature, 

That should last till now the same ; 
But sad it was to be forced to go, 

When the time for the parting came. 

"But now that old age has smote me, 
I have got a hurt that will last; 
On rny teeth it hath wrought decay, 
On my eyesight blindness cast. 



" But though now my head is gray, 

And my locks but thinly spread, 
I have slipt the deerhound many a day 

On the lads with high antlered head. 
Though I love them dearly as ever, 

Were a herd on the hillside in sight, 
I could not go to seek them, 

For my breath has failed me quite. 

" Yestreen as I walked the mountain, 
the thoughts that arose in me; 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 263 

For the people I loved that used to be there 

In the desert, no more could I see. 
Ah ! little I dreamed that Ben 

Such change would undergo, 
That I should see it covered with sheep, 

And the world would deceive me so ! 

" When I looked i-ound on every side, 

How could I feel but drear ! 
For the woods and the heather all were gone, 

And the men were no longer here. 
There was not a deer for the hunting, 

Not a bird, nor a single roe ; 
Of these the few that were not dead 

Hence have vanished long ago. 

"My farewell then to the forests, 

And the marvellous mountains there, 
"Where the green cresses grow, and the clear wells flow, 

Draughts gentle, and kingly, and fair. 
Ye pastures beyond all price ! 

Wildernesses, wide and free, 
On you, since I go to return no more, 

My blessing forever be ! " 

In the close of this pathetic farewell Duncan Ban has 
touched on what has since become a great social ques- 
tion — I mean the clearing of the glens, the depopula- 
tion of the Highlands. This great change — revolution 
I might call it — began early in this century, and our 
bard saw the first fruits of the new system. The old 
native Gael who used to live grouped in hamlets in the 
glens, each with so many small sheep and goats, and a 
little herd of black cattle, which they pastured in com- 
mon on the mountains, these were dispossessed of the 
holdings they had held for immemorial time, to make 
way for Lowland farmers with large capital, who covered 
hill and glen with large flocks of bigger sheep. These 
flocks a few shepherds, often Lowlanders, tended on 



264 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

the mountains from which the old race had been swept, 
till the land indeed became a wilderness. One question 
only was asked — What shall most speedily return 
large rents to the lairds ? What shall grow the largest 
amount of mutton for the Glasgow and Liverpool mar- 
kets ? Tried by this purely commercial standard, the 
ancient Gael were found wanting, and, being dispos- 
sessed, went to America and elsewhere. Great Britain 
thus lost thousands of the finest of its people irrecov- 
erably. 

Since Culloden, the Highlands have received from the 
British Government only one piece of wise and kindly 
legislation. That was, when the elder Pitt gave the 
chiefs or their sons commissions to raise regiments from 
among their clansmen. The result was the Highland 
regiments, who bore themselves, all know how, in the 
Peninsula and at Waterloo. Their name and the re- 
membrance of their achievements remain to this day a" 
tower of strength to the British army, although in some 
of the so-called Highland regiments there is now scarcely 
one genuine Gael. In the glens which formerly sent 
forth whole regiments, you could not now get a single 
man to wear her Majesty's uniform. 

But to return from these matters, economical and po- 
litical, to our bard. It is a noteworthy fact that, as he 
could neither read nor write, he had to carry the whole 
of his poetry, which amounts to about six thousand 
lines, in his memory, which was also stored with a large 
equipment of Ossianic and other current lays. After 
he had preserved his poems for years, a young minister 
committed them to writing from Duncan's recital, and 
in time they were published. Facts like these, and 
they could easily be multiplied, tend to show how short- 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 265 

sighted is the view of critics, who refuse to believe in 
the preserving power of oral tradition. They also show 
how far culture can go, wholly unaided by books. All 
who read with open heart the poetry of our bard must 
acknowledge that here we have a man more truly re- 
plenished with all that is best in culture than most of 
the men who are the products of our modern School 
Board system. 

Maclntyre has sometimes been called the Burns of 
the Highlands. Burns and he lived at the same time, 
but Maclntyre's life overlapped that of Burns at both 
ends. He was older than Burns by thirty-five years, 
and outlived him by sixteen. It is strange, and shows 
the great separation there then was between the High- 
lands and the rest of the world, that there is no evidence 
that either poet knew of the existence of the other. 
Yet Maclntyre must have heard of Burns when he 
passed his old age in Edinburgh. Though they have 
been compared to each other, there is little likeness be- 
tween them, except in this : both were natural, spon- 
taneous singers ; both sang of human life, as they saw 
it with their own eyes ; each is the darling poet of his 
own people. Here the likeness ends. 

Maclntyre had not the experience of men and soci- 
ety, the varied range, of Burns. The problem of the 
rich and poor, and many another problem which vexed 
Burns, never troubled the bard of Glenorchy. He ac- 
cepted his condition, and was content ; had no jealousy 
of those above him in rank or wealth. He was happier 
than Burns in his own inner man, and had no quarrel 
with the world, and the way it was ordered, till they 
expelled the deer, and brought in the big long-wooled 
sheep. But if Maclntyre knew less of man than Burns, 



266 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

he knew more of nature in its grand and solitary moods 
He took it more to heart ; at every turn it more enters 
into his song and forms its texture. 

Maclntyre's poetry eminently disproves — as indeed 
all Gaelic poetry does — that modern doctrine, that love 
of nature is necessarily a late growth, the product of re- 
fined cultivation. It may be so with the phlegmatic 
Teuton, not so with the susceptible and impassioned 
Gael. Their poets, Maclntyre above all, were never 
inside a schoolroom, never read a book ; yet they love 
their mountains as passionately as Wordsworth loved 
his, though with a simpler, more primitive love. 

Mr. Arnold concluded his lectures delivered on Celtic 
Literature by pleading for the foundation in Oxford of 
a Celtic chair. He thought that this might perhaps 
atone for the errors of Saxon Philistines, and send 
through the gentle ministrations of science a message 
of peace to Ireland. Oxford since then has got a Cel- 
tic chair, but has not thereby propitiated Ireland. 

Another Celtic chair is just about to be founded in 
Edinburgh University. But the foundation of Celtic 
chairs will be of small avail, unless the younger gen- 
eration takes advantage of them. To these let me say 
that, if they will but master the language of the Gael, 
and dig in the great quarry of their native song, they 
will find there, to repay their efforts, much that is 
weird and wild, as well as sweet and pathetic, thrilling 
with a piercing tenderness wholly unlike anything in 
the Saxon tongue. There they may not only delight 
and reinvigorate their imagination, but they may fetch 
thence new tones of inspiration for English poetry. 

And more than this, they will find there sources of 
deep human interest. The knowledge of the Gaelic 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 267 

language will be a key to open to them the hearts of 
a noble people, as nothing else can. England and 
Lowland Scotland alike owe a real debt to the Scottish 
Gael, if not so urgent a debt as they owe to Ireland, a 
debt for the wrongs done last century after Culloden 
battle — a debt still unrepaid, perhaps now unrepay- 
able. A debt, too, for the world of pleasure which so 
many strangers annually reap in the Scottish High, 
lands. The native Gael are capable of something more 
than merely to be gillies and keepers to aristocratic or 
plutocratic sportsmen. Within those dim, smoky sheal- 
ings of the west beat hearts warm with feelings which 
the pushing and prosperous Saxon little dreams of. 

That race, last century, sheltered their outlawed 
Prince at the peril of their own lives. While they 
themselves and their families were starving, they re- 
fused the bribe of thirty thousand pounds which was 
offered for his head, and chose to be shot down by 
troopers on their own mountains, rather than betray 
him. Can any nation on earth point to a record of 
finer loyalty and purer self-devotion ? Yet for the race 
that was capable of these things no better fate has been 
found than to be driven, unwilling exiles, from the 
land that reared them. 

Perhaps I may fitly close this brief sketch with some 
lines conveying the feeling with which Duncan Ban's 
romantic but now desolate birthplace was visited a few 
years ago : — 

The homes long are gone, but enchantment still lingers 
The green knolls around, where thy young life began, 
Sweetest and last of the old Celtic singers, 
Bard of the Monadh-dhu, blithe Donach Ban ! 

Never mid scenes of earth fairer or grander 
Poet first lifted his eyelids on light, 



268 MODERN GAELIC BARDS 

Free through these glens, o'er these mountains to wander, 
And make them his own by the true minstrel right. 

Around thee the meeting and green interlacing 
Of clear-flowing waters and far-winding glens, 

Lovely inlaid in the mighty embracing 

Of sombre pine forests and storm-riven Bens : 

Behind thee, the crowding Peaks, region of mystery, 

Fed thy young spirit with broodings sublime, 
Gray cairn and green hillock, each breathing some history 

Of the weird under -Avorld or the wild battle-time. 

Thine were Ben Starrav, Stop-gyre, Meal-na-ruadh, 
Mantled in storm-gloom, or bathed in sunshine, 

Streams from Cor-oran, Glashgower, and Glen-fuadh, 
Made music for thee, where their waters combine. 

But more than all others, thy darling Ben Doran 

Held thee entranced with his beautiful form, 
With looks ever changing thy young fancy storing, 

Gladness of sunshine, and terror of storm, — 

Opened to thee his most secret recesses, 

Taught thee the lore of the red- deer and roe, 
Showed thee them feed on the green mountain cresses, 

Drink the cold wells above lone Doire-chro. 

There thine eye watched them go up the hill-passes, 

At sunrise rejoicing, a proud jaunty throng, 
Learnt the herbs that they love, the small flowers and hill grasses, 

To make these forever bloom green in thy song. 

Yet, child of the wilderness ! nursling of nature ! 

Would the hills e'er have taught thee the true minstrel art, 
Had not one visage, more lovely of feature, 

The fountain unsealed of thy tenderer heart ? 

The maiden that dwelt on the side of Mam-haarie — 
Seen from thy home-door — a vision of joy — 

Morning and even, the young fair-haired Mary 
Moving about at her household employ. 



AND DUNCAN MACINTYRE. 269 

High on Bendoa, and stately Benchallader, 

Leaving the dun deer in safety to hide, 
Fondly thy doating eye dwelt on her, followed her, 

Tenderly wooed her, and won her thy bride. 

O ! well for the maiden who found such a lover ! 

And well for the Poet ; to whom Mary gave 
Her fulness of heart, until, life's journey over, 

She lay down beside him to rest in the grave. 

From the bards of to-day. and their sad thoughts that darken 
The sunshine with doubt, wring the bosom with pain, 

How gladly we fly to the shealings, and hearken 
The clear mountain gladness that sounds through thy strain ! 

In the uplands with thee is no doubt or misgiving, 
But strength, joy, and freedom Atlantic winds blow, 

And kind thoughts are there, and the pure simple living 
Of the warm-hearted Gael in the glens long ago. 

The Muse of old Maro hath pathos and splendor, 

The long lines of Homer in majesty roll ; 
But to me Donach Ban breathes a feeling more tender, 

More akin to the child-heart that sleeps in my soul. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE THREE YARROWS. 

The ideal creations of poets generally have their root, 
whether we can trace it or not, in some personal experi- 
ence. However remote from actual life the perfected 
creation may appear, whether it be a Midsummer Night's 
Dream or a presentation of Hamlet, we may well believe 
that all its finer features were the birth of some chance 
bright moments, when certain aspects of nature, or ex- 
pressions of human countenance, or incidents of life, or 
subtle traits of character, struck on the poet's soul, and 
impressed themselves indelibly there. But though we 
ma}^ be quite sure of this, yet so subtilely works the 
transmuting power of imagination, so reticent have poets 
generally been about their own creations, so little have 
they been given to analyze, themselves, that the cases 
are few in which we can lay our finger on this and that, 
actual fact, and say, these are the elements out of which 
the bright creation came. There are, however, some 
instances among modern poets in which we are allowed 
to trace the first footprints of their thought. And when 
we can do so, this, instead of diminishing our admiration 
of the perfected results, gives them, I believe, an added 
interest. Lockhart has recorded his belief that there is 
hardly a scene, incident, or character in all Scott's poems 
or romances, of which the first suggestion may not be 
traced to some old verse in the Border Minstrelsy, or 
to . some incident or character which he fell in with 



THE THREE YARROWS. 271 

during those raids, in which he gleaned the materials 
of that wonderful book from the sequestered places 
of the green Border hills. It may not be without 
interest if we turn to a contemporary and friend of 
Scott's, and trace the actual facts out of which arose 
three of Wordsworth's most exquisite lyrics, Yarrow 
Unvisited, Yarrow Visited, and Yarroiv Revisited. 

It was in August, 1803, that Wordsworth, though he 
had been born and reared in sight of Scotland's hills, 
for the first time set his foot on Scottish ground. He 
and his sister Dorothy, with Coleridge for their com- 
panion, left Keswick, to make a tour through Scotland, 
mainly on foot. The poet's means, which were then 
but scanty, his income being not more than £100 a 
year, would not allow any more costly way of travel- 
ling ; and well for us that it was so. Out of that " plain 
living," which circumstances enforced, how much of the 
" high thinking " came ! And certainly, as walking is 
the least expensive, so it is the best way in which a 
poet can see a country. Walking alone, or with one 
congenial friend, he can stop, and gaze, and listen, and 
saunter, and meditate, at his will, and let all sights 
and sounds of nature melt into him, as in no other way 
they can. On foot the three travelled up Nithsdale, 
by Falls of Clyde, on to Loch Lomond, where Cole- 
ridge, with whom the morbid period of his life had set 
in, having accompauied them thus far, fell foot-sore, 
got into the dumps, and left them. The other poet, 
witli his hardly less poetic sister, went on alone, and 
traversed on foot the finest highlands of Argyll and 
Perthshire. It is needless to trace their route in prose ; 
for the poet has left his imperishable footprints at Jn- 
inversnaid in the " Sweet Highland Girl ; " on Loch 



272 THE THREE YARROWS. 

Awe side and Kilchurn in his address to the " Child 
of loud-throated War ; " at the Small glen, or head 
of Glen Almond, in the poem on Ossiari's Grave ; on 
Loch Katrine side in " What ? you are stepping west- 
ward ; " in Rob Roy's Grave, which, however, Words- 
worth took to be at Glengyle, not, where it really is, in 
Balquhidder kirkyard ; and at Strathire, in The Solitary 
Reaper. As they two moved quietly along, the poet's 
imagination fell here on some well-known spot, there 
on some familiar human incident, and touched them 
with a light which will consecrate them forever. It 
was, as I have seen on some gray autumnal day among 
the mountains, the slanting silver light moving over the 
dusky wilderness, and touching into sudden brightness 
now a deep-shadowed corrie, now a slip of greensward 
by a burn, or flushing a heathery brae, or suddenly 
bringing out from the gloom some tremendous precipice, 
or striking into momentary glory some far-off mountain 
peak. Only that glory was momentary, seen but by a 
single eye, and then gone. The light, which the poet 
shed on those favored spots, remains a joy for all gen- 
erations, if they have but the heart to feel it. 

Hardly less beautiful than her brother's poems — in- 
deed, sometimes quite equal to them, though far less 
known — are the entries which his sister made in her 
journal during that memorable tour. Native poets have 
done much for Scotland, but nature has done far more, 
and all that they have sung is but a poor instalment of 
the grandeur and the glory which lies still un uttered. 
When Wordsworth, with his fresh eye and strong imagi- 
nation, set foot across the border, he saw further and 
clearer into the heart of things that met him than any 
of the native poets had done, and added a new and 
deeper tone to their minstrelsy. 



THE THREE YARROWS. 273 

In this first tour, when the poet and his sister had 
descended from the Highlands, they went to Rosslyn, 
and then it was, as Lockhart tells us, that Scott first 
saw Wordsworth. " Their mutual acquaintance, Stod- 
dart, had so often talked of them to each other, that 
they met as if they had not been strangers, and they 
parted friends." The 17th of September was the day 
they first met. Wordsworth and his sister walked in 
the early morning from Rosslyn down the valley to 
Lasswade, where Scott was then living, and they ar- 
rived before Mr. and Mrs. Scott had risen. " We were 
received," Wordsworth says, " with that frank cordial- 
ity which, under whatever circumstances I afterwards 
met Scott, always marked his manners. . . . The same 
lively, entertaining conversation, full of anecdote, and 
averse from disquisition ; the same unaffected modesty 
about himself; the same cheerful and benevolent and 
hopeful view of man and the world." They heard some- 
thing that day of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, of 
which they were to hear more at Jedburgh. At the 
close of this day Scott walked with his two friends to 
Rosslyn, and on parting promised to meet them in two 
days at Melrose. The tourists passed by Peebles to 
the Vale of Tweed. There, after looking for a moment 
at Neidpath Castle, "beggared and outraged" by the 
loss of its trees, he turned from these 

" "Wrongs, which Nature scarcely seems to heed: 
For sheltered places, bosoms, nooks, and bays, 
And the pure mountains, and the gentle Tweed, 
And the green silent pastures, yet remain." 

From Peebles, travelling down the Tweed by Traquair, 
Elibank, Ashestiel, through that vale where as yet rail 
way was undreamt of, they found it 



274 THE THREE YARROWS. 

"More pensive in sunshine 
Than others in moonshine.' 

At Clovenford they had reached the spot whence, if at 
all, they should have turned aside to Yarrow. A short 
walk to the ridge of the hill behind Yare, and the 
whole of Yarrow Vale would have lain at their feet. 
They debated about it, and determined to reserve the 
pleasure for a future day. Thence they passed to Mel- 
rose, where Walter Scott met them, and became their 
guide to the " fair " Abbey. Being then " Shirra," and 
on his official rounds, he took them with him to Jed- 
burgh, where the Assize was being held. The inns 
there were so filled with the judges' retinue and the 
lawyers that the poet and his sister had difficulty in find- 
ing quarters. As they passed the evening in their lodg- 
ing, under the roof of that kind hostess whom Words- 
worth celebrated in The Matron of Jedburgh, Scott left 
his brethren of the bar at their port, and stole away to 
spend an hour or two with the water-drinking poet and 
his sister. He then repeated to them a part of The Lay 
of the Last Minstrel, in which Wordsworth at once 
hailed the coming poet, and which he regarded to the 
last as the finest of all Scott's poems. Next day, while 
Scott was engaged in court, he left the poet and his sis- 
ter to go to Ferneyhurst and the old Jed Forest, with 
William Laidlaw for their guide. Miss Wordsworth in 
her journal describes him as " a young man from the 
braes of Yarrow, an acquaintance of Mr. Scott's," who, 
having been much delighted with some of William's 
poems, which he had chanced to see in a newspaper, had 
wished to be introduced to him. He "lives at the most 
retired part of the Dale of Yarrow, where he has a farm. 
He is fond of reading, and well informed, but at first 



THE THREE YARROWS. 275 

meeting as shy as any of our Grasmere lads, and not 
less rustic in his appearance." This was the author of 
Lucys Flitting, Laidlaw's one ballad or song, which, 
for pure natural pathos is unsurpassed, if indeed it is 
equalled, by any lyric that either of the two great poets 
ever wrote. 

Next day Scott accompanied Wordsworth and his sis- 
ter for two miles up a bare hill above Hawick. Thence 
they looked wide " over the moors of Liddesdale, and 
saw the Cheviot hills. We wished we could have gone 
with Mr. Scott into some of the remote dales of this 
country, where in almost every house he can find 
a home." But the friends were obliged to part, the 
Wordsworths to take the road by Mosspaul and Ewes- 
dale to Langholm, Scott to return to the duties of his 
sheriffry. It would have been a curious sight to see 
how Wordsworth would have comported himself, if he 
had been ushered into a company of Scott's friends, the 
Hill Farmers of the Dandy Dinmont stamp, with their 
big punch-bowls and deep draughts. 

When Wordsworth returned to his Grasmere home, 
he finished the poem Yarrow Unvisited, which had 
been suggested by the incident I have mentioned at 
Clovenford. 

Eleven years passed before Wordsworth again visited 
Scotland. The visit this time was less memorable. It 
was not lighted up by that wonderful journal of his sis- 
ter's, and it called forth from the poet himself only four 
memorials in verse. Of these, Yarrow Visited is the 
only one in the poet's happiest manner. The road, by 
which Wordsworth and his travelling companions ap- 
proached Yarrow, was that leading across the hill from 
Innerleithen. The night before they passed in the se- 



276 THE THREE YARROWS. 

questered hamlet of Traquair, perhaps it may have been 
in Traquair Manse. Next morning the Ettrick Shep- 
herd met the party at Traquair, and became their guide 
to his own home-land. One can imagine the simple- 
hearted garrulous vanity with which Hogg would per- 
form the office of guide, and how Wordsworth, who be- 
lieved himself to be so much the greater of the two, 
would receive the patronizing attentions. 

P>om Traquair they walked, and so had a full view 
of Yarrow Yale from the descending road. In Yarrow, 
they visited in his cottage the father of the Ettrick 
Shepherd, himself a shepherd, a fine old man, more than 
eighty years of age. This may have been at one or 
other of Hogg's two homes on Yarrow, Benger Mount 
or Altrive Lake. How Wordsworth was solemnized 
and elevated by this his first look on Yarrow, we shall 
see when we come to consider the poem Yarrow Visited. 
Their route that day lay up the stream to St. Mary's 
Loch, which has left its impress on the poem. And 
irom thence they seem to have traversed the whole 
course of Yarrow, till its union with the Ettrick. 

Seventeen more years passed before Wordsworth 
again crossed the Scottish Border. This time it was on 
a sad errand, to visit Sir Walter Scott once again be- 
fore "his last going from Tweedside," in hope of re- 
cruiting his shattered health in Italy. " How sadly 
changed did I find him from the man I had seen so 
healthy, gay, and hopeful a few years before, when he 
said at the inn at Patterdale, in my presence, " I mean 
to live till I am eighty, and shall write as long as I 
live ' ! " Wordsworth and his daughter spent the first 
evening with the family party at Abbotsford, and among 
them was William Laidlaw, now a very old friend of 



THE THREE YARROWS. 277 

Sir Walters, who had for several years been his aman- 
uensis. Next day — it was a Tuesday — they drove to 
Newark Castle, accompanied by most of the home 
party ; and the two poets, both now stricken with 
years, wandered about the woodland walks overhang- 
ing that Yarrow, of which each in his prime had sung 
so well. They did not, however, penetrate beyond the 
wooded banks near the lower part of the river, into the 
upper and more pastoral region. It was this day which 
Wordsworth commemorated in his Yarrow Revisited. 
On their return home they came down the north bank 
of Tweed, and crossed the river at the ford immediately 
under Abbotsford. As the wheels of their carriage 
grated upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream, 
Wordsworth looked up and saw at that moment a rich 
but sad light, purple rather than golden, spread over 
Eildon Hills. Thinking that this was, probably, the 
very last time that Sir Walter would ever cross the 
stream, he was not a little moved, and gave vent to 
some of his feelings in the sonnet — 

" A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain, 
Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light 
Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon' s triple height." 

Farther on, fain to comfort himself and others, he 
breaks out — 

" Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners ! for the might 
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes; 
Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue 
Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, 
Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true, 
Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea, 
Wafting your Charge to soft Parthenope ! " 

He appeals to the elements and to the universal heart 
of man to come to the help of him, whom elsewhere 



278 THE THREE YARROWS. 

he calls " the whole world's darling;" but it will not 
do. 

There were other affecting incidents connected with 
that visit. It was on the morning of the Thursday, just 
before Wordsworth left at noon, that Sir Walter wrote 
in the album of Wordsworth's daughter some imper- 
fectly finished stanzas. As he stood by his desk, and 
put the book into her hand, he said to her in her 
father's presence, " I should not have done anything of 
this kind, but for your father's sake ; they are probably 
the last verses I shall ever write." And they were the 
last. 

One stanza clings to memory. Alluding to the fact 

that Wordsworth had listened to The Lay of the Last 

Minstrel before it was given to the world, and had 

hailed it as a true work of genius, Sir Walter says, — 

"And meet it is that he who saw 

The first faint rays of genius burn 
Should mark their latest light with awe, 
Low glimmering from their funeral urn." 

At parting, Wordsworth expressed to Sir Walter his 

hope that the mild climate of Italy would restore his 

health, and the classic remembrances interest him, to 

which Sir Walter replied in words from Yarrow Un- 

visited, which Wordsworth in his musings in Aquapen- 

dente, six years afterwards, thus recalls : — 

" Still, in more than ear-deep seats, 
Survives for me, and cannot but survive, 
The tone of voice which wedded borrowed words 
To sadness not their own, when, with faint smile, 
Forced by intent to take from speech its edge, 
He said, ' When I am there, although 't is fair, 
'Twill be another Yarrow.' Prophecy 
More than fulfilled, as gay Campania's shores 
Soon witnessed, and the city of seven hills, 
Her sparkling fountains and her mouldering tombs ; 



THE THREE YARROWS. 279 

And more than all, that Eminence which showed 
Her splendors, seen, not felt, the while he stood, 
A few short steps (painful they were) apart 
From Tasso's Convent-haven and retired grave." 

These three visits of Wordsworth to Scotland, and 
the incidents connected with them, called forth his 
Three Yarrows. The first visit and the last are asso- 
ciated with Sir Walter, the second with the Ettrick 
Shepherd. And each of the three poets has shed on 
Yarrow the light of his peculiar genius. 

It would be an interesting subject to turn aside and 
note what a different aspect Yarrow wore, what different 
feelings it called up in each poet, as seen by his own 
individual eye. But there is an anterior question which 
may very naturally occur to any one to ask — What is 
there peculiar about Yarrow, of all the thousand streams 
of Scotland, to rivet the affection, and call forth the 
finest minstrelsy of these three poets ? A chance comer 
passing down its green braes and holms, if told that this 
dale was consecrated to song, might well exclaim, — 

" What 's Yarrow but a river bare 
That glides the dark hills under ? 
There are a thousand such elsewhere 
. As worthy of your wonder." 

To a casual and hurried glance it might well seem so ; 
but there, too, as elsewhere, it is not to the first rapid 
look that the truth reveals itself. 

What is it, then, that has so consecrated Yarrow to 
song and poetry, made it dear to the hearts of so many 
poets, dear too to every heart in which there dwells any 
tone of melody? The very name is itself a poem, 
sounding wildly sweet, sad, and musical. And when 
you see it, the place answers with a strange fitness 
to the name. It is, as it were, the inner sanctuary of 



280 THE THREE YARROWS. 

the whole Scottish Border, of that mountain tract which 
sweeps from sea to sea, from St. Abb's Head and the 
Lammermuir westward to the hills of Galloway. It 
concentrates in itself all that is most characteristic of 
that scenery. The soft green rounded hills with their 
flowing outlines, overlapping and melting into each other, 
— the clear streams winding clown between them from 
side to side, margined with green slips of holm, — the 
steep brae-sides with the splendor of mountain grass, 
interlaced here and there with darker ferns, or purple 
heather, — the hundred side-burns that feed the main 
Dale-river, coming from hidden Hopes where the gray 
Peel-tower still moulders, — the pensive aspect of the 
whole region so solitary and desolate. Then Yarrow is 
the centre of the once famous but now vanished Forest 
of Ettrick, with its memories of proud huntings and 
chivalry, of glamourie and the land of Faery. Again, it 
is the home of some " old unhappy far-off thing," some 
immemorial romantic sorrow, so remote that tradition 
has forgotten its incidents, yet cannot forget the impres- 
sion of its sadness. Ballad after ballad comes down 
loaded with a dirge-like wail for some sad event, made 
still sadder for that it befell in Yarrow. The oldest 
ballad that survives, The Dowie Dens <? Yarrow, tells of 
a knight, one probably of the clan Scott, treacherously 
slain in combat by a kinsman : — 

" She 's kiss'd his cheek, she 's kaim'd his hair, 
As oft she 's done before, ; 
She 's belted him wi' his noble brand, 
And he 's awa' to Yarrow." 

To Yarrow too belongs that most pathetic Lament of 
the Border Widow, sung by his wife Marjory over the 
grave of the outlaw Piers Cockburn, when she had 
buried him by his tower of Henderland : — 



THE THREE YARROWS. 281 

" I sew'd his sheet, making my maen ; 
I watch'd the corpse, myself alane ; 
I watch'd his body, night and day, 
No living creature cam' that way. 

" I took his body on my back, 
And whiles I gaed, and whiles I sate, 
I digg'd a grave, and laid him in, 
And happ'd him with the sod sae green. 

"But think na ye my heart was sair, 
When I laid the mool on his yellow hair ; 
O think na ye my heart was wae, 
When I turn'd about, away to gae V " 

Below Henderlancl, a mile down Yarrow, moulders 

Dryhope Tower, the birthplace in Queen Mary's time 

of the famous Mary Scott, the first Flower of Yarrow, 

renowned for her beauty, wooed by all the chieftains of 

the Border, and won to be his wife by the famous Wat 

of Harden. Another mile down, comes into Yarrow 

River the Douglas Burn, which, after it flowed past the 

now ruined Blackhouse Tower, home of Lady Margaret 

and scene of The Douglas Tragedy, had its waters dyed 

with the blood of the stricken Lord William. 

" they rade on, and on they rade, 
And a' by the light of the moon, 
Until they came to yon wan water, 
And there they lighted doun. 

" They lighted doun to tak a drink 
Of the springs that ran sae clear ; 
And down the stream ran his gude heart's blood, 
And sair she 'gan to fear." 

And all the way down, not a " Hope" or a burn joins 
Yarrow from either side, but had its Peel-tower, the 
hcene of some tragic or romantic incident, many of 
them remembered, more forgotten. 

Last century the old popular wail was taken up by 



282 THE THREE YARROWS. 

two ladies, each of an ancient Border name, and each 
the authoress of a beautiful song, set to the old tune of 
the Flowers of the Forest. But their strains were but 
the echoes of a far older refrain, coeval probably with 
Flodden, which Scott sought to recover, but found two 
lines only : — 

"I ride single in my saddle, 
For the Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away." 

Last century, too, Hamilton of Bangour carried on the 
strain, but in a lighter mood, in his well-known bal- 
lad— 

" Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny, bonny bride." 

And soon after Logan recurred to the older and more 

plaintive form of the melody, adding to it another note 

of sadness : — 

" They sought him east, they sought him west, 
They sought him all the forest thorough, 
They nothing saw but the coming night, 
They nothing heard but the roar of Yarrow. 

M No longer from thy window look, 
Thou hast no son, thou tender mother, 
No longer walk, thou weeping maid, 
Alas ! thou hast no more a brother." 

Such was the great background of pathetic feeling 
out of which Yarrow came forth to meet the poets of 
this century. In the earliest years of it Scott, by gath- 
ering together and concentrating all that was oldest and 
finest in the ancient songs of " The Forest," had con- 
ferred a new and deeper consecration on Yarrow. 
When Wordsworth passed down Tweed-dale with his 
sister from that first interview at Lasswade, Scott had 
already published his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 
but had not yet made the Last Minstrel 
"Pass where Newark's ruined tower 
Looks forth from Yarrow's birchen bower," 



THE THREE YARROWS. 283 

much less dreamed of Marmion, with those so interest- 
ing introductions, in one of which he sings of St. Mary's 
silent lake : — 

" There 's nothing left to Fancy's guess, 
You see that all is loneliness; 
Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude, 
So stilly is the solitude." 

Then Wordsworth came, and as he travelled down the 
bank of Tweed, and felt that on the other side of the 
hill, within an hour's walk, lay Yarrow, the very sanct- 
uary of old Border song, doubtless the poetic heart 
was stirred within him, and he longed to look on the 
romantic river. But he was constrained — probably 
enough from some quite prosaic reason — to pass on, 
and the thoughts and feelings came to him which took 
shape in Yarrow Unvisited. Turn to the poem. It 
opens in a lighter, more frolicsome vein than was usual 
with Wordsworth — frolicsome, we may call it, not hu- 
morous, for to humor Wordsworth never attained. His 
sister evidently desires to 

"turn aside, 
And see the braes of Yarrow." 

To her wish — it may have been importunity — the 
poet replies, We have seen so many famous rivers all 
Scotland over ; so many famous streams lie before us 
yet to see — Galla Water, Leader Haughs, Dryburgh 
by the " charming Tweed " — 

" There 's pleasant Teviotdale, a land 

Made blithe with plough and harrow" : 
Why throw away a needful day 
To go in search of Yarrow ? " 

And then he breaks out, — 

" What 's Yarrow but a river bare 
That glides the dark hills under ? 



284 THE THREE YARROWS. 

There are a thousand such elsewhere 
As worthy of your wonder." 

His sister looks up in his face surprised and pained to 
hear her brother speak in what seemed scorn of the 
old romantic river. To her look the poet replies in a 
somewhat more serious strain, admits that there must 
be something worth their seeing in Yarrow- — the green 
holms, the fair flowing river — but these for the present 
they must pass by, and must allow 

l( The swan on still St. Mary's Lake, 
Float double, swan and shadow." 

And then the deep undertone of feeling which lay be- 
neath all the lighter chaff and seeming disparagement 
breaks out in these two immortal stanzas : — 

" Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown ; 
It must, or we shall rue it : 
We have a vision of our own : 
Ah! why should we undo it? 

' The treasured dreams of times long past 
We '11 keep them, winsome Marrow! 
For, when we 're there, although 't is fair, 
'Twill be another Yarrow! " 

After this ideal gleam has for a moment broken over 
it, the light of common day again closes in, and the 
poem ends with the comforting thought that — 

" Should life be dull, and spirits low, 
'T will soothe us in our sorrow 
That earth has something yet to show, 
The bonny holms of Yarrow ! " 

The whole poem, if it contains only two stanzas pitched 
in Wordsworth's highest strain, is throughout in his 
most felicitous diction. The manner is that of the old 
ballad, with an infusion of modern reflection, which yet 
does not spoil its naturalness. The metre is that in 



THE THREE YARROWS. 285 

which most of the old Yarrow ballads, from The Dowie 
Dens onward, are cast, with the second and the fourth 
lines in each stanza ending in double rhymes, to let the 
refrain fall full on the fine melodious name of Yar- 
row. It plays w r ith the subject, rises and falls — now 
light-hearted, now serious, then back to homeliness, 
with a most graceful movement. It has in it something 
of that ethereality of thought and manner which be- 
longed to Wordsworth's earlier lyrics — those composed 
during the last years of the preceding and the first 
few years of this century. This peculiar ethereality — 
which is a thing to feel rather than to describe — left 
him after about 1805, and though replaced in the best 
of his later poems by increased depth and mellowness 
of reflection, yet could no more be compensated than 
the fresh gleam of new-fledged leaves in spring can be 
made up for by their autumnal glory. 

Years pass, and Wordsworth at length, guided by the 
Ettrick Shepherd, looks on the actual Yarrow, and takes 
up the strain, where he had left it eleven years before. 
Then the feeling was — 

" We have a vision of our own ; 
Ah ! why should we undo it ! " 
Now it is — 

" And is this — Yarrow V — This the stream, 
Of which my fancy cherish' d, 
So faithfully, a waking dream, 
An image that hath perish'd? " 

This famous exclamation, which has long since passed 
into the mind of the world, had scarcely found vent, 
when there falls a strange sadness on the poet's heart 
and he would that some minstrel were near to dispel it 
with glad music. Yet why should he be sad ? The 
stream wanders on its wav clear and silvery — 



286 THE THREE YARROWS. 

" Nor have these eyes by greener hills 
Been soothed, in all my wanderings ; 

"And, through her depths, Saint Mary's Lake 
Is visibly delighted; 
For not a feature of those hills 
Is in the mirror slighted." 

And " a blue sky bends o'er Yarrow Vale," save where 
it is flecked by " pearly whiteness " of a fair Septem- 
ber morning. Everything that meets his eye is beauti- 
ful and soothing. But the braes, though beautiful, look 
so solitary and desolate, and the solitariness of the pres- 
ent answers too well to the sadness of the past. Sum- 
ming up all the sorrows of innumerable songs in one 
question, he exclaims, — 

" Where was it that the famous Flower 
Of Yarrow Vale lay bleeding ? " 

And here, if we might pause on details of fact, we might 
say that Wordsworth fell into an inaccuracy ; for Mary 
Scott of Dryhope, the real " Flower of Yarrow," never 
did lie bleeding on Yarrow, but became the wife of Wat 
of Harden, and the mother of a wide-branching race. 
Yet Wordsworth speaks of his bed, evidently confound- 
ing the lady " Flower of Yarrow " with that " slaugh- 
tered youth " for whom so many ballads had sung la- 
ment. This slight divergence from fact, however, no 
way mars the truth of feeling, which makes the poet 
long to pierce into the dumb past, and know something 
of the pathetic histories that have immortalized these 
braes. But, though he cannot recall the buried his- 
tories of the past, he does not fail to read to the life the 
present sentiment that pervades Yarrow : — 

"Meek loveliness is round thee spread, 
A softness still and holy; 
The grace of forest charms decayed, 
And pastoral melancholy." 



THE THREE YARROWS. 287 

No words in the language penetrate more truly and 
deeply into the very heart of nature. It was one of 
Wordsworth's great gifts to be able to concentrate the 
whole feeling of a wide scene into a few words, sim- 
ple, strong, penetrating to the very core. Many a time, 
and for many a varied scene, he has done this, but per- 
haps he has never put forth this power more happily 
than in the four lines in which he has summed up for all 
time the true quality of Yarrow. You look on Yarrow, 
you repeat those four lines over to yourself, and you 
feel that the finer, more subtle, essence of nature has 
never been more perfectly uttered in human words. 
There it stands complete. No poet coming after Words- 
worth need try to do it again, for it has been done once? 
perfectly and forever. 

The verses which follow relapse from that high alti- 
tude into a more ordinary level of description. Having 
traversed the stream from St. Mary's Loch to Newark 
and Bowhill, he leaves it with the impression that sight 
has not destroyed imagination — the actual not effaced 
the ideal : — 

"... Not by sight alone, 

Lov'd Yarrow, have I won thee ; 
A ray of fancy still survives — 

Her sunshine plays upon thee ! 

"... I know where'er I go, 
Thy genuine image, Yarrow ! 
"Will dwell with me, to heighten joy 
And cheer my mind in sorrow." 

Compared with Yarroiv Unvisited, Yarrow Visited 

does not go with such a swing from end to end. The 

second poem has in it more of contemplative pause than 

the first. There is more irregularity in the quality of 

its stanzas — some of them rising to an excellence which 



288 THE THREE YARROWS. 

Wordsworth has not surpassed, and which has impressed 
them on the poetic memory as possessions forever, others 
sinking down to the level of ordinary poetic workman- 
ship. But even in a lyric of a dozen stanzas, if a note 
is struck here and there of the highest pitch, to main- 
tain the strain at the same level throughout seems 
hardly given to man. It will be found, I think, on 
examination, that the lyric stanzas which have taken 
an undying -hold on mankind, are almost always em- 
bedded among other stanzas not so perfect. Even the 
most gifted poets cannot keep on expressing their best 
thoughts in the best words throughout all the stanzas 
of a long lyric. 

Seventeen more years, and then came the farewell 
visit to Abbotsford, and that last day on Yarrow, when 

"Once more, by Newark's Castle-gate, 
Long left without a warder, 
I stood, looked, listened, and with me, 
Great minstrel of the Border ! 



" And through the silent portal arch 
Of mouldering Newark enter'd; 

"And clomb the winding stair that once 
Too timidly was mounted 
By the ' last Minstrel ' (not the last!) 
Ere he his Tale recounted." 

It was a day late in September, and, judging by the 
natural features touched in Yarrow Revisited, the party 
from Abbotsford did not go to the upper course of 
Yarrow, where the braes are green and treeless, but 
lingered among the woods of Bowhill, and about the 
ruin of Newark. The leaves on these woods were sere, 
but made redder or more golden as the breezes played, 
>r the autumnal sunshine shot through them. 



THE THREE YARROWS. 289 

As they wandered through the wooded banks that 
overhang Yarrow, they 

" Made a clay of happy hours, 
Their happy days recalling: 

"And if, as Yarrow, through the woods 
And down the meadow ranging, 
Did meet us with unaltered face, 
Though we were changed and changing; 

" If then, some natural shadows spread 
Our inward prospect over, 
The soul's deep valley was not slow 
Its brightness to recover." 

No wonder that some shadows overspread their mental 

prospect that day, for, as regarded Scott, 

"... Sickness lingering yet 
Has o'er his pillow brooded ; 
And Care waylays his steps, — a sprite 
Not easily eluded." 

Against these forebodings of decay Wordsworth through- 
out the poem contends with wonderful buoyancy. But 
the pressure of fact was too heavy to be put by. It 
required something more than the soothing influences 
of nature, or even the faith which Wordsworth so 
cherished, 

" Naught shall prevail against us, or disturb 

The cheerful faith that all which we behold 

Is full of goodness," 

to have enabled Scott or his friends to bear his then 
condition. From the sight of that inevitable decay 
Wordsworth turned, and tried to soothe himself and his 
friends with the hope that, though he was compelled to 
leave his Tweed and Teviot, " Sorrento's breezy waves " 
would give him gracious welcome, and Tiber before his 
eyes " with unimagined beauty shine." 



290 THE THREE YARROWS. 

" For Thou, upon a hundred streams, 
By tales of love and sorrow, 
Of faithful love, undaunted truth, 
Hast shed the power of Yarrow; 

" And streams unknown, hills yet unseen, 
Wherever they invite Thee, 
At parent Nature's grateful call, 
With gladness must requite thee." 

Alas ! how different was the reality ! In Lockhart's 
Life of him may be read, with how dull and unstirred 
a heart he gazed on all that Italy contains of art or 
nature, how the only things, which for a moment reani- 
mated him, were the Tombs of the Stuarts in St. Peter's, 
and the sight of the heather on the Apennines, remind- 
ing him of his native land. 

After the expression of the hope of what Italy may 
do to restore Scott, Wordsworth passes on, in four more 
stanzas, to reflect on the power of " localized Romance " 
to elevate and beautify existence, how 

" The visions of the past 
Sustain the heart in feeling 
Life as she is, — our changeful Life." 

And then the poem, longer than either of the two 
preceding ones, closes with this farewell benediction on 
the stream, whose immemorial charm his own three 
poems have so greatly enhanced :> — 

" Flow on forever, Yarrow Stream! 
Fulfil thy pensive duty, 
Well pleased that future Bards should chant, 
For simple hearts thy beauty ; " 

" To dream-light dear while yet unseen, 
Dear to the common sunshine, 
And dearer still, as now I feel, 
To memory's shadowy moonshine " 



THE THREE YARROWS. 291 

This poem, along with the touching sonnet which 
condenses much of the same sentiment, and tells Scott 
that 

"the might 
Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes," 

was sent to him soon afterwards, and reached him be- 
fore he left London for Italy. No record remains as to 
how he took these poems, or what pleasure they gave 
him. Probably the pall of gloom was by this time 
settling down on his mind too heavily, to be lifted off by 
any song that mortal poet could sing. 

Compared with the two former poems, Yarrow Re- 
visited falls short of the ideal tone to which, they were 
set. In the former, the poet's mind was free to follow 
its natural impulse, and, unencumbered with present 
fact, to see Yarrow Vale in the visionary light which 
romance and foregone humanities had combined to shed 
upon it. 

In the last poem the sense of Scott's recent misfor- 
tunes and declining health was too painfully present to 
admit of such treatment. Wordsworth was himself con- 
scious of this, and in the retrospect he made this re- 
mark : " There is too much pressure of fact for these 
verses to harmonize, as much as I could wish, with the 
two preceding poems." This is true. And yet if it 
wants the idealizing touch, it has qualities of its own, 
which well compensate for that want. It is one of the 
latest of Wordsworth's poems, in which his natural 
power is seen still unabated ; and if it falls below the 
best things he did in his best days, it is only second to 
these, and displays his later or autumnal manner in its 
best form. Several of the stanzas above quoted are 
only a little .below the finest verses in the best of the 



292 THE THREE YARROWS. 

Lyrical Ballads, written in his poetic prime. But if 
some may estimate the artistic merit of Yarrow Re- 
visited lower than I am inclined to do, they cannot deny 
its human and historic interest. It is an enduring rec- 
ord of the friendship of two poets, the greatest of their 
time, and of the last scene in that friendship. Com- 
mencing with that first meeting at Lasswade, before 
either was much known to fame, their friendship lasted, 
unabated till death parted them. 

The two poets had lived apart, and met only by occa- 
sional visits, when Wordsworth crossed the Scottish 
border, or Scott visited the Lakes. On one of these 
latter occasions they had together ascended Helvellyn, 
and some have supposed, but, I believe, without reason, 
that "Wordsworth commemorated that ascent in the lines 
beginning : — 

"Inmate of a mountain dwelling." 
But there is no doubt that in one of his latest poems, 
" Musings in Aquapendente," he reverted to that day on 

" Old Helvellyn' s brow, 
Where once together, in his day of strength, 
We stood rejoicing, as if earth were free 
From sorrow, like the sky above our heads." 

The characters of Wordsworth and Scott were not 
less different than were the views and methods on which 
their poetry was constructed. But they each esteemed 
and honored the other, throughout their days of active 
creation, and now they had met for what they well 
knew, though they did not say it, must be their final 
interview. It was an affecting and solemn interview, 
according to the prose account of it which Wordsworth 
and Lockhart have each given ; not less affecting than 
this, its poetic record. 



THE THREE YARROWS. 293 

Then, again, the poem is a memorial of the very last 
visit Scott ever paid, not to Yarrow only, but to any 
scene in that land which he had so loved and glorified. 
A memorial of that day, struck off on the spot, even by 
an inferior hand, would have been precious. But when 
no less a poet than Wordsworth was there to commem- 
orate this, Scott's last day by his native streams, and 
when into that record he poured so much of the mellow 
music of his autumnal genius, the whole poem reaches 
to a quite tragic pathos. As you croon over its solemn 
cadences, and think of the circumstances out of which it 
arose, and the sequel that was so soon to follow, you 
seem to overhear in every line 

" The still sad music of humanity." 
Wordsworth never revisited those scenes. But once 
again, on hearing of the death of James Hogg, in No- 
vember, 1835, in thought he returned to Yarrow, and 
poured out this Extempore Effusion, probably the very 
last outburst in which his genius flashed forth with its 
old poetic fervor : — 

" When first, descending from the moorlands, 
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide 
Along a bare and open valley, 
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide. 

" When last along its banks I wandered, 

Through groves which had begun to shed 
Their golden leaves upon the pathways, 
My steps the Border-minstrel led. 

" The mighty minstrel breathes no longer, 
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies ; 
And death upon the braes of Yarrow, 
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes. 



" Like clouds that rake the mountain summits, 
Or waves that own no curbing hand, 



294 THE THREE YARROWS. 

How fast has brother followed brother, 
From sunshine to the sunless land ! 

"Yet, I, whose lids from infant slumber 
Were earlier raised, remain to hear 
A timid voice, that asks in whispers, 
' Who next will drop and disappear? ' " 

These lines are a fitting epilogue to the three poems, 
" by which," as Lockhart has said, " Wordsworth has 
connected his name to all time with the most romantic 
of Scottish streams," and, he might have added, with 
the greatest of Scottish poets. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE WHITE DOE OP RYLSTONE. 

"What induced Wordsworth for once to stray into 
the field of romance, and to choose for his theme this 
last effort of decaying chivalry — Wordsworth, whose 
genius we generally associate with incidents which are 
homely, and subjects which are reflective? His other 
poems all turn upon modern persons and experiences. 
But The White Doe of Ryhtone goes back to the feudal 
period of England's history, just before its close. In 
choosing such a theme, does not Wordsworth seem to 
have forsaken his proper region, and to have trespassed 
for once upon the domain of Scott? For is not the 
story of the " Fall of the Nortons " just such an one as 
might have inspired one of Scott's metrical romances ? 
So at first sight it might seem. And yet a closer study 
of this poem will, perhaps, show more than anything 
else could how wide is the contrast between the genius 
of the two poets. The whole way in which Words- 
worth handles the subject, and the peculiar effect which 
he brings out of it, are so unlike Scott's manner of treat- 
ment, are so entirely true to Wordsworth's special vein 
of thought and sentiment, that this contrast, even if 
there were nothing else, would make the poem worthy 
of close regard. 

The incidents on which the White Doe is founded 
belong to the year 1569, the twelfth of Queen Eliza* 
betli. 



296 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

It is well known that as soon as Queen Mary of Scot- 
land was imprisoned in England, she became the cen- 
tre around which gathered all the intrigues which were 
then on foot, not only in England, but throughout Cath- 
olic Europe, to dethrone the Protestant Queen Eliza- 
beth. Abroad, the Catholic world was collecting all its 
strength, to crush the heretical island. The bigot Pope 
Pius V., with the dark intriguer Philip II. of Spain, 
and the savage Duke of Alva, were ready to pour their 
forces on the shores of England. 

At home, a secret negotiation for a marriage between 
Queen Mary and the Duke of Norfolk had received the 
approval of many of the chief English nobles. The 
Queen discovered the plot, threw Norfolk and some of 
his friends into the Tower, and summoned Percy, Earl 
of Northumberland, and Neville, Earl of Westmore- 
land, immediately to appear at court. These two earls 
were known to be holding secret communication with 
Mary, and longing to see the old faith restored. 

On receiving the summons, Northumberland at once 
withdrew to Brancepeth Castle, a stronghold of the 
Earl of Westmoreland. Straightway all their vassals 
rose and gathered round the two great earls. The 
whole of the North was in arms. A proclamation went 
forth that they intended to restore the ancient religion, 
to settle the succession to the crown, and to prevent the 
destruction of the old nobility. As they marched for- 
ward they were joined by all the strength of the York- 
shire dales, and, among others, by a gentleman of 
ancient name, Richard Norton, accompanied by eight 
brave sons. He came bearing the common banner, 
called the Banner of the Five Wounds, because on it 
was displayed the Cross with the five wounds of our 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 297 

Lord. The insurgents entered Durham, tore the Bible, 
caused mass to be said in the cathedral, and then set for- 
ward as for York. Changing their purpose on the way, 
they turned aside to lay siege to Barnard Castle, which 
was held by Sir George Bowes for the Queen. While 
they lingered there for eleven days, Sussex marched 
against them from York, and the earls, losing heart, re- 
tired towards the Border, and disbanded their forces, 
which were left to the vengeance of the enemy, while 
they themselves sought refuge in Scotland. Northum- 
berland, after a confinement of several years in Loch 
Leven Castle, was betrayed by the Scots to the Eng- 
lish, and put to death. "Westmoreland died an exile in 
Flanders, the last of the ancient house of the Nevilles, 
earls of Westmoreland. Norton, with his eight sons, 
fell into the hands of Sussex, and all suffered death at 
York. It is the fate of this ancient family on which 
Wordsworth's poem is founded. 

Wordsworth was not the first poet who had touched 
the theme. Some nameless North England minstrel 
had before composed a not unspirited ballad upon it, 
which appears in Percy's Reliques, under the title of 
The Rising in the North. 

Although these incidents might perhaps have con- 
tained too little of martial prowess, battle, and adven- 
ture to satisfy Scott, yet we can all imagine what he 
would have made of them; how he would have rev- 
elled in the description of the mustering vassals ; the 
hot haste in which they flew from their homes to the 
standard of the earls ; the varieties of armor ; the em- 
blazonment of the shields, the caparisoned steeds on 
which the earls rode ; the scene when the army entered 
Durham and filled the cathedral ; the sie^e of Barnard 



298 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

Castle by the Tees ; the countermarch of Sussex ; the 
dismay spreading from the earls among their followers ; 
the retreat and the final catastrophe. What vigorous 
portraits we should have had of Northumberland and of 
Westmoreland ; nor less of Bowes and Sussex, each 
standing out distinct, in his own individual guise and 
personality ! 

Of all this pomp and pageantry of war Wordsworth 
gives little or nothing. Tn fact, he hardly attempts to 
•' conduct the action," or to bring out the main incidents 
at all, or to portray the chief personages. So entirely, 
in the poet's thought, is the action subordinated to the 
one pervading sentiment he desires to convey, that the 
narrative portion of the poem seems broken, feeble, and 
ill-adjusted. For not on the main action at all, but on 
quite a side incident — not on the obvious, but on a 
more hidden aspect of the story, has Wordsworth fixed 
his eye. 

Not that the epic faculty was wholly wanting in him. 
In the song of Brougham Castle he had struck a true 
epic strain : — 

"Armor rusting in his halls 
On the blood of Clifford calls ; — 
1 Quell the Scot,' exclaims the lance — 
' Bear me to the heart of France,' 
Is the longing of the shield." 

This, if no other of his poems, proves that he was not 
insensible to the thought that — 

"In our halls is hung 
Armor of the invincible knights of old." 

But his delights were not with these. Nowhere does 
this appear more clearly than in The White Doe of RyU 
stone, where, with such temptation to dwell on one of 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 299 

the latest outbursts of the feudal spirit in England, he 
turned so persistently aside to contemplate quite another 
aspect of things. 

What that aspect is — what were the incidents in 
that rising in the North, which arrested Wordsworth's 
imagination and drew forth from him this poem, we 
shall see by and by. 

It is well, in studying any poet, to note at what 
period of his life each particular poem was written. It 
is, I think, of especial importance to do so in the study 
of Wordsworth. For, as has been often noted, he had 
at least two distinct periods — each of them marked by 
its own style, both of sentiment and of diction. 

The period of his first and finest inspiration reached 
from about the year 1795 to 1805, or perhaps 1807. 
This decade is the period of his restoration to mental 
health and hopefulness, after the depression and de- 
spondency into which the failure of the French Revolu- 
tion had plunged him. His mind had just come back 
from chaos to order, and yet retained the full swing of 
the impulse it had received, by having passed through 
that great world-agony. To these ten years belong 
most of the poems to which men now turn with most 
delight, as containing the essence of that new inspira- 
tion which Wordsworth let in upon the world. There 
is in them the freshness, ethereality, " the innocent 
brightness," as " of the new-born day." Or, they are 
like the reawakening that comes upon the moors and 
mountains, when the first breath of spring is blowing 
over them. The best poems of his later era have a 
quality of their own — a deepened though tfulness, a 
pensive solemnity, like the afternoon of an autumnal 
day. 



300 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

Now The White Doe of JRylstone was composed in 
1807, just at the close of his first period, though not 
published till 1815. It was during the summer of 1807, 
the poet tells us, that he visited, for the first time, the 
beautiful scenery that surrounds Bolton Priory ; and the 
poem of The White Doe, founded on a tradition con- 
nected with the place, was composed at the close of the 
same year. That tradition, as preserved by Dr. Whit- 
aker, in his History of Craven, runs thus : Not long 
after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, " a white doe, 
say the aged people of the neighborhood, long continued 
to make a weekly pilgrimage from Rylstone over the 
fells of Bolton, and was constantly found in the Abbey 
churchyard during the divine service ; after the close of 
which she returned home as regularly as the rest of the 
congregation." This is the story which laid hold of 
Wordsworth's imagination, and to which we owe the 
poem. The earlier half, he tells us, was composed, at 
the close of the year 1807, while on a visit to his wife's 
relatives at Stockton-upon-Tees, and the poem was fin- 
ished on his return to Grasmere. That year had just 
seen the publication of the two volumes of Lyrical Bal- 
lads, which contain perhaps his highest inspirations and, 
as it were, wind up the productions of his first great 
creative period. 

The White Doe, therefore, marks the beginning of 
the transition to his second period, the period of The 
Excursion. But in the finest parts of The White Doe 
we still feel the presence of the same ethereal spirit, 
which animated his earlier day. The introduction to 
the poem, which bears the date of 1815, is altogether in 
his later vein. 

Without, however, saying more of the circumstances 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 301 

under which the poem was composed, let me now turn 
to itself, and note its contents canto by canto. 

The First Canto opens with a Sunday forenoon, and 
the gathering of the people from the moorlands and 
hills around the Wharf to the church-service in Bolton 
Abbey. This beautiful ruin of the middle age stands 
on a level green holm down by the side of the Wharf, 
surrounded by wooded banks and moorland hills. From 
these, on the Sunday morn, the people come trooping 
eagerly, for they are in the first zeal of the Reformation 
era. The place where they meet for worship is the 
nave of the old Abbey Church, which at the Dissolu- 
tion had been preserved, when everything else belong- 
ing to the monastic house had gone down before the 
fury of the spoiler. The throng of country people has 
passed within the church, the singing of the prelusive 
hymn has been heard outside. Then silence ensues, for 
the priest has begun to recite the liturgy, when suddenly 
a white doe is seen pacing into the churchyard ground. 

" A moment ends the fervent din, 
And all is hushed, without and within; 
For though the priest, more tranquilly, 
Recites the holy liturgy, 
The only voice which you can hear 
Is the river murmuring near. 

— When soft ! — the dusky trees between, 
And down the path through the open green, 
Where is no living thing to be seen; 

And through yon gateway where is found, 
Beneath the arch with ivy bound, 
Free entrance to the churchyard grourffi, 
And right across the verdant sod 
Towards the very house of God ; 

— Comes gliding in with lovely gleam, 
Comes gliding in, serene and slow, 

Soft and silent as a dream, 
A solitary doe ! 



302 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

White she is as lily of June, 

And beauteous as the silver moon, 

When out of sight the clouds are driven, 

And she is left alone in heaven; 

Or like a ship some gentle day 

In sunshine sailing far away, 

A glittering ship, that hath the plain 

Of ocean for her own domain. 

Lie silent in your graves, ye dead ! 

Lie quiet in your churchyard bed ! 

Ye living, tend your holy cares ; 

Ye multitude, pursue your prayers ; 

And blame not me if my heart and sight 

Are occupied with one delight ! 

'Tis a work for Sabbath hours 

If I with this bright creature go : 
Whether she be of forest bowers, 

From the bowers of earth below ; 
Or a spirit, for one day given, 
A gift of grace from purest heaven. 
What harmonious pensive changes 
Wait upon her as she ranges 
Round and round this pile of state, 
Overthrown and desolate ! 
Now a step or two her way 
Is through space of open day, 
Where the enamored sunny light 
Brightens her that was so bright; 
Now doth a delicate shadow fall, 

Falls upon her like a breath, 
From some lofty arch or wall, 

As she passes underneath: 
Now some gloomy nook partakes 
Of the glory that she makes, — 
High-ribbed vault of stone, or cell 
With perfect cunning framed as well 
Of stone, and ivy, and the spread 
Of the elder's bushy head; 
Some jealous and forbidding cell, 
That doth the living stars repel, 
And where no flower hath leave to dwell." 

I know not any lines in the octosyllablic metre more 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 303 

perfect in their rhythm, and with melody more attuned 
to the meaning and sentiment they are intended to con- 
vey. They might be placed next after the most ex- 
quisite parts of Christabel. If metre has its origin, as 
Coleridge suggests, in the balance produced by the 
power of the will striving to hold in check the working 
of emotion — if it is the union and interpenetration of 
will and emotion, of impulse and purpose, I know not 
where this balance can be seen more beautifully ad- 
justed. As for the description of the ruined Bolton 
Abbey, seen in the light of a Sabbath noon, it may well 
be compared with Scott's description of Melrose, seen 
while still in its prime, under the light of the moon. 

Presently, service over, the congregation pass out, 
and then begin many questionings and surmises as to 
what mean these visits of the doe, renewed every Sun- 
day, to the Abbey churchyard and that solitary grave. 
First a mother points her out to her boy, but he shrinks 
back in a kind of superstitious awe — 

" ' Bat is she truly what she seems ? ' 
He asks, with insecure delight, 
Asks of himself — and doubts — and still 
The doubt returns against his will." 

Then an old man comes, a soldier returned from the 
wars, and he has his explanation. It is the spirit of the 
lady who, in grief for her son drowned in the Wharf 
many centuries ago, founded Bolton Priory, and now 
returns in the shape of this beautiful creature, to grieve 
over her holy place outraged and overthrown. 

Then a dame of haughty air, followed by a page to 
carry her book, opines that the doe comes with no good 
intent, for often she is seen to gaze down into a vault, 
" where the bodies are buried upright." 



301: THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

" There, face by face, and hand by hand, 
The Claphams and Mauleverers stand." 

There too is buried the savage John de Clapham, who, 
in the Wars of the Roses, 

" Dragged Earl Pembroke from Banbury Church, 
And smote off" his head on the stones of the porch." 

This high dame has the blood of the Pembrokes in her 
veins, and believes the doe has something to do with 
the Earl's murderer. 

" The scholar pale 
From Oxford come to his native vale," 

he has a conceit of his own ; he believes the doe to be 
none other than the gracious fairy or ministrant spirit, 
who in old time waited on the Shepherd-Lord Clifford, 
when in the neighboring tower of Barden he gave 
himself to the study of the stars, and alchemy, and other 
such glamourie, with the monks of Bolton for compan- 
ions of his researches. 

At last, after the people have gazed and questioned 
to their hearts' content, they disperse, and the doe also 
disappears. 

Left alone, the poet turns to give the true version, 
and to chant — 

"A tale of tears, a mortal story." 

In Canto II. he passes at once from the doe to her, 
whose companion, years before, she had been, the only 
daughter of the House of Norton- He glances back to 
the days just before the rising m the North, when there 
stood in the hall of Kylstone that banner, embroidered 
with the cross and the five wounds, which Emily had 
wrought with her own hands, but against her will, in 
obedience to her father. 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 305 

" That banner, waiting for the call, 
Stood quietly in Rylstone Hall." 

At length the call came, and at the summons Norton 
and his sons go forth to join the two Earls, who were 
in arms for the Catholic cause. With eight sons he 
went ; but one, Francis, the eldest, would not go. He 
and his only sister, who had received the Reformed 
faith long ago from their mother ere she died, now look 
with sorrow and foreboding on the rash enterprise, in 
which their father and brothers are going forth. Fran- 
cis makes one effort to avert their fate ; he throws him- 
self at his father's feet, and though he knew he would 
be scorned as a recreant, entreats him to hold his hand, 
and not to join the rising, urging many reasons, — most 
of all, would he thus forsake his only daughter ? In 
vain — the old man goes forth from the hall, and is re- 
ceived with shouts by the assembled tenantry, and all 
together, squire and vassals, march off to Brancepeth 
Castle, the try sting-place. 

Here was a passage of which Scott would have made 
much ; the gathering around the old hall of the yeomen 
of Rylstone, their marching forth, and their reception 
by their confederates at Brancepeth. Of this there is 
scarce a hint in Wordsworth. He turns aside, wholly 
occupied with the brother and sister left behind. 

When these two are left alone, Francis tells his sis- 
ter of his last interview with their father, and of seeing 
him and his eight brothers march forth. For himself, 
though he cannot be one with them, he is determined to 
follow them, and be at hand to render what service he 
may, when misfortune comes, as come it must. For he 
does not try to hide or extenuate the certainty of the 
doom that was overtaking their house. He himself was 
20 



306 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

going to share it, and his sister must brace her heart to 
bear what was impending. Possessed, as by a spirit of 
mournful divination, he tells her — 
"Farewell all wishes, all debate, 

All prayers for this cause, or for that ! 

Weep, if that aid thee; but depend 

Upon no help of outward friend. 

Espouse thy doom at once, and cleave 

To Fortitude without reprieve. 

For we must fall, both we and ours, — 

This mansion, and these pleasant bowers, 

The blast will sweep us all away, 

One desolation, one decay ! " 

Then, pointing to the White Doe which was feeding by, 

he continued — 

" Even she will to her peaceful woods 
Return, and to her murmuring floods, 
And be in heart and soul the same 
She was, before she hither came, 
Ere she had learned to love us all, 
Herself beloved in Rylstone Hall." 

He bids his sister prepare for the doom that awaits 
them, to look for no consolation from earthly sources, 
but to seek it in that purer faith which they had learned 
together. These are his words to her : — 

"But thou, my sister, doomed to be 
The last leaf which by Heaven's decree 
Must hang upon a blasted tree ; 
If not in vain we breathed the breath 
Together of a purer faith — 
If on one thought our minds have fed, 
And we have in one meaning read — 
If we like combatants have fared, 
And for this issue been prepared — 
If thou art beautiful, and youth 
And thought endue thee with all truth — 
Be strong; — be worthy of the grace 
Of God, and fill thy destined place : 
A soul by force of sorrows high, 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 307 

Uplifted to the purest sky 
Of undisturbed humanity." 

When he had by this solemn adjuration, as it were, 
consecrated his sister to fulfil her destiny, and to become 
a soul beatified by sorrow, they part, and he follows his 
armed kinsmen. This consecration, and the sanctifying 
effect of sorrow on the heroine, is, as "Wordsworth him- 
self has said, " the point on which henceforth the whole 
moral interest of the poem hinges." 

The Third Canto describes the mustering of the host 
at Brancepeth Castle, which was the Earl of Westmore- 
land's stronghold on the Were, the meeting of Norton 
and his eight sons with the two Earls, and his high- 
spirited address to these — 

"Brave earls, to whose heroic veins 
Our noblest blood is given in trust," 

urging them to rise for their outraged faith and the old 
and holy Church. 

Then follows the unfurling of the banner which Nor- 
ton's child had wrought, to be the standard of the whole 
army, the march to Durham, where, after they 

"In Saint Cuthbert's ancient see 
Sang mass — and tore the Book of Prayer — 
And trod the Bible beneath their feet," 

the whole host musters on Clifford Moor, 

"Full sixteen thousand fair to see." 

Among them all the finest figure is the aged Squire 

of Eylstone: — 

"No shape of man in all the array 
So graced the sunshine of the day; 
The monumental pomp of age 
Was with this goodly Personage ; 
A stature, undepressed in size, 
Unbent, which rather seemed to rise 



308 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

In open victory o'er the weight 
Of seventy years, to higher height; 
Magnific limbs of withered state, 
A face to fear and venerate, 
Eyes dark and strong, and on his head 
Bright locks of silver hair, thick spread, 
Which a bright morion half concealed, 
Light as a hunter's of the field." 

The stirring incidents of this Canto afford much 
scope for pictorial painting ; but this is perhaps the 
one passage in which Wordsworth has attempted it. 
There are several speeches, which, though not without 
a certain quaint homely expressiveness, have nothing of 
the poetic oratory which Scott would have imparted to 
them. 

The intention was to march direct on London ; but 
news reaches them on the way that Dudley had set out 
against them, and was nearing York with a large and 
well-appointed force. Westmoreland's heart fails him ; 
a retreat is ordered ; Norton remonstrates in vain. A 
disorderly march is begun backward toward the Tees, 
there to wait till Dacre from Na worth, and Howard, 
Duke of Norfolk, come to reinforce them. Francis 
Norton, who had followed unarmed, and 

" Had watched the banner from afar, 
As shepherds watch a lonely star," 

once more throws himself in the way of his father, and 
beseeches him to retire from these craven-hearted lead- 
ers, who, by their incompetence and cowardliness, were 
leading so many brave men to sure destruction. He 
had done his part by them, and was now by their mis- 
conduct freed from farther obligation. The old man 
spurns aside his son, who retires to wait another oppor- 
tunity. In this narrative part of the poem, though 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 809 

there are many lines of quaint and rugged strength, 
there is none of the clear, direct, forward-flowing march 
of Scott's best narrative poetry. Wordsworth is en- 
cumbered, as it were, by reflectiveness of manner ; the 
thought, instead of a rapid onward flow, keeps ever ed- 
dying round itself. 

Canto IV. A clear full moon looks down upon the 
insurgents beleaguering Barnard Castle on the River 
Tees. The same moon shines on Rylstone Hall, with 
its terraces, parterres, and the wild chase around it, all 
untenanted, save by Emily and her White Doe. Here 
is the description of it : — 

" And southward far, with moors between, 
Hill-tops, and floods, and forests green, 
The bright moon sees that valley small, 
"Where Rylstone' s old sequestered Hall 
A venerable image yields 
Of quiet to the neighboring fields; 
While from one pillared chimney breathes 
The smoke, and mounts in silver wreaths, 
— The courts are hushed ; — for timely sleep 
The grey-hounds to their kennel creep; 
The peacock to the broad ash-tree 
Aloft is roosted for the night, 
He who in proud prosperity 
Of colors manifold and bright 
Walked round, affronting the daylight ; 
And higher still, above the bower 
Where he is perched, from yon lone tower 
The Hall-clock in the clear moonshine 
With glittering finger points at nine." 

The gleam of natural loveliness here let in wonder- 
fully relieves the pressure of the human sadness. In- 
deed, the whole passage from which these lines come 
gives so truthfully, yet ideally, the image of an old 
family mansion seen at such an hour, that I cannot re- 
call any moonlight picture which equals it. 



310 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

Wandering in the moonlight around her old home, 
Emily enters by chance a woodbine bower, where in 
her childhood she had often sat with her mother. The 
woodbine fragrance recalls, as scents only can, those 
long-vanished hours, and — 

"An image faint, 
And yet not faint — a presence bright 
Returns to her, — 't is that blest saint, 
Who with mild looks and language mild 
Instructed here her darling child, 
While yet a prattler on the knee, 
To worship in simplicity 
The Invisible God, and take for guide 
The faith reformed and purified." 

By that vision she is soothed, and strengthened to check 
her strong longing to follow her father and her brothers, 
and to disobey the injunction to passive endurance laid 
on her by Francis. 

That same moon, as it shines on the Tees, sees another 
sight — the insurgent host, wildly assaulting Barnard 
Castle, Norton and his eight sons, as they dash reck- 
lessly into a breach in the wall, made prisoners, and 
the whole rash levy scattered to the winds. 

In Canto V. an old retainer, whom Emily Norton 
had sent to gain tidings of her father, returning, finds 
her by a watch-tower or summer house, that stood high 
among the wastes of Rylstone Fell, and tells her the 
tragic end of her father and brothers. They had been 
led in chains to York, and were condemned to die. 
Francis had followed them, got access to their prison, 
and received the last commands of his father with his 
blessing. 

The banner was, by the cruel order of Sussex, to be 
carried before them in mockery to the place of execu- 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 311 

tion. But Francis, claiming it as his own by right, 
takes it from the hands of the soldier to "whom it was 
entrusted, and bears it off through the unresisting crowd. 
Richard Norton and his eight sons go forth, and calmly 
and reverently meet their doom. 

Emily returns to Bylstone Hall to await the coming 
of her now only brother. But he comes not. As he 
was leaving York, there fell on his ear the sound of the 
minster bell, tolling the knell of his father and his 
brothers. Bearing the banner, though not without mis- 
givings as to his own consistency in doing so, he held 
west over the great plain of York, up Wharfdale, and 
on the second day reaches a summit whence he can 
descry the far-off towers of Bolton. On that spot he is 
overtaken by a band of horsemen sent by Sussex, under 
command of Sir George Bowes, is accused of being a 
coward and traitor, who had held aloof from the rising 
only to save his father's land, and is overpowered and 
slain. Two days his body lay unheeded ; on the third 
it was found in that lonely place by one of the Norton 
tenantry, who, along with other yeomen, bears it to 
Bolton Priory, and there, with the aid of the priest, 
they lay it in a grave apart from the other graves, be- 
cause this was not the family burial-place. While they 
are so engaged, his sister, who was wandering towards 
Bolton, overhears the dirge they are singing, 
"And, darting like a wounded bird, 

She reached the grave, and with her breast 

Upon the ground received the rest. 

The consummation, the whole ruth 

And sorrow of this final truth." 

But it is in the Seventh and last Canto, when all inci- 
dent and action are over, and suffering, and the beauty 
rising out of suffering, alone remain, that the full powei 



312 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

of the poet comes out. Just as in the First Canto the 
calm contemplation of the ruined abbey, the sabbath 
quiet, and the apparition of the doe, had prompted his 
finest tones, so here, the sight of the only sister, sole 
survivor of her ruined house, left alone with her sorrow, 
awakens a strain of calm, deep melody, which is a meet 
close for such a beginning. 

Now that -Emily Norton knows to the full her fami- 
ly's doom, the poet turns and asks, — 

"Whither has she fled? 
What mighty forest in its gloom 
Enfolds her ? Is a rifted tomb 
Within the wilderness her seat ? 
Some island which the wild waves beat, 
Is that the sufferer's last retreat ? 
Or some aspiring rock, that shrouds 
Its perilous front in mists and clouds ? 
High climbing rock — low sunless dale — 
Sea — desert — what do these avail V 
Oh, take her anguish and her fears 
Into a deep recess of years ! " 

And years do pass ere we see her again. Neglect and 
desolation have swept over Rylstone, and in their an- 
cient home the name of Norton is unknown. Many a 
weary foot she has wandered, far from her home, which 
from the day of Francis' bu,rial she has not looked 
upon. At length, after many years, she returns to the 
neighborhood, and is seen on a bank once covered with 
oaks, but now bare, seated under one sole surviving 
mouldering tree. 

"Behold her, like a virgin queen, 
Neglecting in imperial state 
These outward images of fate, 
And carrying inward a serene 
And perfect sway, through many a thought 
Of chance and change, that hath been brought 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 313 

To the subjection of a holy, 

Though stern and rigorous, melancholy ! 

The like authority, with grace 

Of awf ulness, is in her face — 

There hath she fixed it ; yet it seems 

To overshadoAv, by no native right, 

That face, which cannot lose the gleams, 

Lose utterly the tender gleams, 

Of gentleness and meek delight, 

And loving-kindness ever bright : 

Such is her sovereign mien : — her dress 

(A vest, with woolen cincture tied ; 

A hood of mountain-wool undyed) 

Is homely — fashioned to express 

A wandering Pilgrim's humbleness." 

That is the nearest approach the poem contains to 
a visible picture of this daughter of the house of Nor- 
ton. Yet how little of a picture it is ! — her features, 
her hair, her eyes, not one of these is mentioned. She 
is painted almost entirely from within. Yet so power- 
fully is the soul portrayed, that no adequate painter 
would find any difficulty in adding the form and face, 
which would be the outward image of such a character. 

There, while she sits, a herd of deer sweeps by. But 
one out of the herd pauses and draws near. It is her 
own White Doe, which had run wild again for years. 
Now it comes to her feet, lays its head upon her knee, 
looks up into her face, — 

" A look of pure benignity, 
And fond unclouded memory." 

Her mistress melted into tears, 

"A flood of tears that flowed apace 
Upon the happy creature's face." 

The doe restored came like a spirit of healing and con- 
solation to Emily Norton. Thenceforth, go where she 
will, the creature is by her side. First to one cottage 



314 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

in the neighborhood, then to another, where old tenant! 
of the family lived, she went and sojourned, and the 
White Doe with her. At length she finds courage to 
revisit her old haunts about Rylstone — Norton Tower, 
— that summer-house, where the messenger of the sad 
tidings had found her — near which, years before, her 
youngest brother had found the doe, when a fawn, and 
carried it in his arms home to Rylstone Hall. The 
prophecy of Francis, she thinks, has been fulfilled al- 
most to the letter — in one detail only had it been 
falsified — all else was taken, but the White Doe re- 
mained to her, her last living friend. With this com- 
panion, she dared to visit Bolton Abbey and the single 
grave there. 

So, through all the overthrow and the suffering, there 
had come at last healing and calm, and with it 

"A reascent in sanctity 

From fair to fairer; day by day 

A more divine and loftier way ! 

Even such this blessed Pilgrim trod, 

By sorrow lifted toward her God ; 

Uplifted to the purest sky 

Of undisturbed mortality." 
At length, after she had returned and sojourned 
among the Wharf dale peasants, and joined in their Sab- 
bath worships, she died, and was laid in Rylstone church 
by her mother's side. 

The White Doe long survived her, and continued to 
haunt the spots which her mistress had longed to visit. 
But the close, which rounds off the whole with perfect 
beauty, must be given in the poet's own words : — 

" Most glorious sunset ! and a ray 
Survives — the twilight of this day — 
In that fair creature whom the fields 
Support, and whom the forest shields ; 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 31£ 

Who, having filled a holy place, 
Partakes, in her degree, Heaven's grace ; 
And bears a memory and a mind 
Raised far above the law of kind ; 
Haunting the spots with lonely cheer 
Which her dear mistress once held dear: 
Loves most what Emily loved most — 
The enclosure of this churchyard ground ; 
Here wanders like a gliding ghost, 
And every Sabbath here is found; 
Comes with the people when the bells 
Are heard among the moorland dells, 
Finds entrance through yon arch, where way 
Lies open on the Sabbath-day ; 
Here walks amid the mournful waste 
Of prostrate altars, shrines defaced, 
And floors encumbered with rich show 
Of fret-work imagery laid low; 
Paces slowly or makes halt 
By fractured cell, or tomb, or vault, 
By plate of monumental brass 
Dim-gleaming among weeds and grass, 
And sculptured forms of warriors brave; 
But chiefly by that single grave, 
That one sequestered hillock green, 
The pensive visitant is seen. 
Thus doth the gentle creature lie 
With these adversities unmoved ; 
Calm spectacle, by earth and sky 
In their benignity approved ! 
And aye, methinks, this hoary pile, 
Subdued by outrage and decay, 
Looks down upon her with a smile, 
A gracious smile that seems to say, 
' Thou, thou art not a child of time, 
But daughter of the Eternal Prime.' " 

The main aim of the whole poem is to set forth the 
purification and elevation of the heroine's character by 
the baptism of sorrow through which she was doomed 
to pass. Let us hear Wordsworth's own account of it. 
In one of those reminiscences which he d : ctated in his 



316 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

later years, after noting that the White Doe had been 
compared with Scott's poems, because, like them, the 
scene was laid in feudal times, — 

"The comparison," he says, "is inconsiderate. Sir 
Walter pursued the customary and very natural course of 
conducting an action, presenting various turns of fortune, 
to some outstanding point, as a termination or catastrophe. 
The course I attempted to pursue is entirely different. 
Everything that is attempted by the chief personages in the 
White Doe fails, so far as its object is external and substan- 
tial; so far as it is moral and spiritual it succeeds. The 
heroine knows that her duty is not to interfere with the cur- 
rent of events, either to forward or delay them ; but 

"To abide 
The shock, and finally secure 
O'er pain and grief a triumph pure." 

The anticipated beatification, if I may say so, of her mind, 
and the apotheosis of the companion of her solitude, are the 
points at which the poem aims, and constitute its legitimate 
catastrophe — far too spiritual a one for instant and wide- 
spread sympathy, but not therefore the less fitted to make a 
deep and permanent impression upon those minds who think 
and feel more independently, than the many do, of the sur- 
faces of things, and of interests transitory, because belong- 
ing more to the outward and social forms of life than to its 
internal spirit." 

Such is Wordsworth's account of his aim, given 
late in life, to the friend who wrote down his reminis- 
cences of his own poems. 

Writing to a friend at the time of its publication, he 
says : — 

" The White Doe will be acceptable to the intelligent, for 
whom alone it is written. It starts from a high point of im- 
agination, and comes round, through various wanderings of 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 317 

that faculty, to a still higher — nothing less than the apothe- 
osis of the animal who gives the title to the poem. And as 
the poem begins and ends with fine and lofty imagination, 
every motive and impetus that actuates the persons intro- 
duced is from the same source; a kindred spirit pervades 
and is intended to harmonize the whole. Throughout, ob- 
jects (the banner, for instance) derive their influence, not 
from properties inherent in them, not from what they act- 
ually are in themselves, but from such qualities as are be- 
stowed on them by the minds of those who are conversant 
with or affected by those objects. Thus the poetry, if there 
be any in the work, proceeds, as it ought to do, from the 
soul of man, communicating its creative energies to the im- 
ages of the external world." 

Such accounts in sober prose of what he aimed at in 
poetry, are valuable as coming from the poet himself ; 
especially so in the case of Wordsworth, who, though 
he composed, as all poets must do, under the power of 
emotion and creative impulse, was yet able afterwards 
to reflect on the emotion that possessed him, and lay his 
finger on the aim that actuated him, as few poets have 
been able to do. Some have adduced this as a proof 
that it was not the highest kind of inspiration by which 
Wordsworth was impelled, for such, they say, is uncon- 
scious, and can give little or no account of itself. With- 
out going into this question, there is no doubt that 
Wordsworth had reflected on the workings of imagina- 
tion more, and could describe them better, than most 
poets. To the later editions of the poem he has fur- 
ther prefixed some lines in blank verse, which are his 
own comment on the supreme aim of the poem — ■ 
namely, the total subordination in it of action to endur- 
ance : — 

"Action is transitory — a step, a blow, 
The motion of a muscle — this wav or that — 



318 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

*T is done, and in the after-vacancy of thought 

"We wonder at ourselves as men betrayed. 

Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, 

And has the nature of infinity. 

Yet through that darkness, infinite though it seem 

And irremovable, gracious openings lie, 

By which the soul — with patient steps of thought, 

Now toiling, wafted now on wings of prayer — 

May pass in hope, and, though from mortal bonds 

Yet undelivered, rise with sure ascent 

Even to the fountain-head of peace divine." 

It is an obvious remark that the purifying and hal- 
lowing effect of suffering, which is here so prominently 
brought out, does not belong to suffering merely in it- 
self. There are many cases where suffering only hardens 
and degrades. If it elevates, it does so, not by its own 
inherent nature, but by virtue of the primal moral bias 
— the faith which receives and transmutes it. Though 
Wordsworth does not dwell on this, he everywhere im- 
plies it. And yet here, as elsewhere in his works, nota- 
bly in the book of the Excursion, entitled Despondency 
Corrected, Wordsworth is, perhaps, disposed to attribute 
a greater sanative power to the influences of outward 
nature, and to the recuperative forces inherent in the 
individual soul, than experience warrants, not to speak 
of revelation. It is not that he anywhere denies the 
need of direct assistance from above — indeed, he often 
implies it. But the error, if error there be, lies in not 
observing the due proportions of things — in giving to 
nature, and the soul's inherent resources, too great a 
prominence in the work of restoration ; and in mark- 
ing, with too faint emphasis, the need of a help which 
is immediately divine. Late in life, when this charac- 
teristic of his writings was alluded to, Wordsworth said 
that he had been slow to deal directly with Christian 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 319 

truths, partly from feeling their sacredness, partly from 
a sense of his inability to do justice to them, and to in- 
terweave them with sufficient ease, and with becoming 
reverence, into his poetic structures. And in one or two 
passages of his poem, where the defect above noticed 
was most apparent, he afterwards altered the passages, 
and, while he increased their Christian sentiment, did 
not, perhaps, improve their poetic beauty. 

But to return to the poem. What is it that gives to 
it its chief power and charm ? Is it not the imaginative 
use which the poet has made of the White Doe ? With 
her appearance the poem opens, with her reappearance 
it closes. And the passages in which she is introduced 
are radiant with the purest light of poetry. A mere 
floating tradition she was, which the historian of Craven 
had preserved. How much does the poet bring out of 
how little ! It was a high stroke of genius to seize on 
this slight traditionary incident, and make it the organ 
of so much. What were the objects which he had to 
describe and blend into one harmonious whole ? They 
were these : 

1. The last expiring gleam of feudal chivalry, ending 
in the ruin of an ancient race, and the desolation of an 
ancestral home. 

2. The sole survivor, purified and exalted by the suf- 
ferings she had to undergo. 

3. The pathos of the decaying sanctities of Bolton, 
after wrong and outrage, abandoned to the healing of 
nature and time. 

4. Lastly, the beautiful scenery of pastoral Wharf- 
dale, and of the fells around Bolton, which blends so 
well with these affecting memories. 



320 THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 

All these were before him — they had melted into his 
imagination, and waited to be woven into one harmoni- 
ous creation. He takes the White Doe, and makes her 
the exponent, the symbol, the embodiment of them all. 
The one central aim — to represent the beatification of 
the heroine — how was this to be attained? Had it 
been a drama, the poet would have made the heroine 
give forth in speeches her hidden mind and character. 
But this was a romantic narrative. Was the poet to 
make her soliloquize, analyze her own feelings, lay bare 
her heart in metaphysical monologue ? This might 
have been done by some modern poets, but it was not 
Wordsworth's way of exhibiting character, reflective 
though he was. When he analyzes feelings they are 
generally his own, not those of his characters. To 
shadow forth that which is invisible, the sanctity of 
Emily's chastened soul, he lays hold of this sensible im- 
age — a creature, the purest, most innocent, most beau- 
tiful in the whole realm of nature — and makes her the 
vehicle in which he embodies the saintliness, which is a 
thing invisible. It is the hardest of all tasks to make 
spiritual things sensuous, without degrading them. I 
know not where this difficulty has been more happily 
met; for we are made to feel that, before the poem 
closes, the doe has ceased to be a mere animal, or a 
physical creature at all, but in the light of the poet's 
imagination has been transfigured into a heavenly appa- 
rition — a type of all that is pure, and affecting, and 
saintly. And not only the chastened soul of her mis- 
tress, but the beautiful Priory of Bolton, the whole vale 
of Wharf, and all the surrounding scenery, are illumined 
by the glory which she makes ; her presence irradiates 



THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE. 321 

them all with a beauty and an interest more than the 
eye discovers. Seen through her as an imaginative 
transparency, they become spiritualized ; in fact, she 
and they alike become the symbols and expression of 
the sentiment which pervades the poem — a sentiment 
broad and deep as the world. And yet, any one who 
visits these scenes in a mellow autumnal day, will feel 
that she is no alien or adventitious image, imported by 
the caprice of the poet, but one altogether native to the 
place, one which gathers up and concentrates all the un- 
defined spirit and sentiment which lie spread around it. 
She both glorifies the scenery by her presence, and her- 
self seems to be a natural growth of the scenery, so 
that it finds in her its most appropriate utterance. This 
power of imagination to divine and project the very cor- 
poreal image, which suits and expresses the spirit of a 
scene, Wordsworth has many times shown. Notably, 
for instance, do those ghostly shapes, which might meet 
at noontide under the dark dome of the fraternal yews 
of Borrowdale, embody the feeling awakened when one 
stands there. But never perhaps has he shown this em- 
bodying power of imagination more felicitously than 
when he made the White Doe the ideal exponent of 
the scenery, the memories, and the sympathies which 
cluster around Bolton Priory. 

One more thing I would notice. While change, de- 
struction, and death overtake everything else in the 
poem, they do not touch this sylvan creature. So en- 
tirely has the poet's imagination transfigured her, that 
she is no longer a mere thing of flesh, but has become 
an image of the mind, and taken to herself the perma- 
nence of an ideal existence. This is expressed in th6 
concluding lines. 

21 



322 THE WHITE DOE AT RYLSTONE. 

And so the poem has no definite end, but passes ofi°, 
as it were, into the illimitable. It rises out of the per- 
turbations of time and transitory things, and, passing 
upward itself, takes our thoughts with it, to calm places 
and eternal sunshine. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE HOMERIC SPIRIT IN WALTER SCOTT. 

The poetry of Scott is so familiar to all men from 
their childhood, the drift of it is so obvious, the mean- 
ing seems to lie so entirely on the surface, that it may 
appear as if nothing more could be said about it, noth- 
ing which every one did not already know. In the 
memory of most men it almost blends with their nur- 
sery rhymes ; their childhood listened to it, their boy- 
hood revelled in it; but when they came to manhood 
they desired, perhaps, to put aside such simple things, 
and to pass on to something more subtle and reflective. 
Yet if we consider the time at which this poetry ap- 
peared, the conditions of the age which produced it, the 
great background of history out of which it grew, and 
to which it gave new meaning and interest — if we fur- 
ther compare it with poetry of a like nature belonging 
to other nations and ages, and see its likeness to, and its 
difference from, their minstrelsies, we shall perhaps per- 
ceive that it has another import and a higher value than 
we suspected. As sometimes happens with persons who 
have been born and have always lived amid beautiful 
scenery, that they know not how beautiful their native 
district is till they have travelled abroad, and found 
few other regions that may compare with it, so I think 
it is with the poetry of Scott. We have been so long 
familiar with it, that we hardly know how unique it is, 
how truly great. 



324 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

A wide knowledge of the poetry of all ages and na- 
tions, so far from depreciating the value of Scott's min- 
strelsy, will only enhance it in our eyes. When we 
come to know that many nations which possess an abun- 
dant literature have nothing answering to the poetry of 
Scott, that all the national literatures, ancient and mod- 
ern, which the world has produced, can only show a 
very few specimens of poetry of this order, and these 
separated from each other by intervals of centuries, 
we shall then perhaps learn to prize, more truly and in- 
telligently, the great national inheritance which Scott 
has bequeathed to us in his poetic romances. 

It might be too great a shock to the nerves of critics 
to assert that Scott is distinctively and peculiarly a 
great epic poet. But even the strictest criticism must 
allow that, whatever other elements of interest his 
poems possess, they contain more of the Homeric or 
epic element than any other poems in the English lan- 
guage. If, to a reader who could read no other lan- 
guage than his own, I wished to convey an impression 
of whit Homer was like, I should say let him read the 
more heroic parts of Scott's poems, and from these he 
would gather some insight into the Homeric spirit ; in- 
adequate, no doubt, meagre, some might perhaps say, 
yet true it would be, as far as it goes. 

First, then, let us ask what is meant by an epic 
poem. Aristotle has answered this question in the 
Poetics, and the definition he there gives holds good to 
this day. Its substance has been thus condensed by 
Mr. Thomas Arnold in his interesting Manual of Eng- 
lish Literature: " The subject of the epic poem must be 
some one, great, complex action. The principal per- 
sonages must belong to the high places of the world, 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 325 

and must be grand and elevated in their ideas and in 
their bearing. The measure must be of a sonorous 
dignity, befitting the subject. The action is carried 
on by a mixture of narrative, dialogue, and soliloquy. 
Briefly to express its main requisites, the epic poem 
treats of one great, complex action, in a grand style and 
with fulness of detail." 

Few European nations possess more than one real 
epic — some great nations possess none. The Iliad, 
the JEneid, the Niebelungen Lied, the Jerusalem De- 
livered, and Paradise Lost, these are the recognized 
great epics of the world. It was the fashion in the last 
century to institute elaborate comparisons between some 
of them, as though they were all poems of exactly the 
same order. So much was this the case that Addison 
in the Spectator wrote a series of papers, in which he 
compares the Lliad, the sEneid, and Paradise Lost, 
first, with respect to the choice of subject, secondly, to 
the mode of treatment ; and in both respects he gives 
the palm to Milton. And so little was the essential dif- 
ference between Homer and Milton perceived up to the 
very end of last century, that so genuine a poet as Cow- 
per, when he set himself to translate Homer, chose as 
his vehicle the blank verse of Milton. Grand, impress- 
ive, but elaborate, involved, full of " inversion and preg- 
nant conciseness," as Milton's verse is, nothing in the 
world could be a more unfit medium for conveying to 
the English reader the general effect produced by the 
direct, rapid, easy-flowing yet dignified narrative of 
Homer. As Mr. Matthew Arnold has said, " Homer 
is not only rapid in movement, simple in style, plain in 
language, natural in thought ; he is also, and above all, 
noble." Between the popular epic and the literary epic 



326 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

there is a deep and essential difference, a difference 
which, though Addison and Cowper failed to discern it, 
we cannot too much lay to heart, if we would really 
understand and appreciate the spirit of epic poetry. 
The first critic, as far as I know, who pointed out this 
distinction was the famous German scholar Wolf, who 
in his Prolegomena or introductory essays to Homer, 
published in 1795, insisted on it with much earnestness. 
He says, " That view of things has not yet been entirely 
exploded, which makes men read in the same spirit 
Homer and Callimachus and Virgil and Milton, and 
take no pains to weigh and observe how different are 
the productions to which the age of each of these gives 
birth." This distinction, first noted by Wolf, Professor 
Blackie, in his Homeric Dissertations prefixed to his 
translation of the Iliad, has enforced and illustrated in 
his own lively way. The following, he shows, are the 
chief notes of the popular epic : — 

1. It is the product of an early and primitive age, 
before a written literature has come into existence, while 
the songs or ballads of the people were still preserved 
in memory — repeated orally, and not yet committed to 
writing. 

2. It is founded on some great national event which 
has impressed itself deeply on the national imagination, 
and it portrays, celebrates, glorifies, some great national 
hero. 

3. The popular epic tells its story in a plain, easy- 
flowing, direct, and ample style. There is no dainti- 
ness either as to the things the poet describes, or the 
language in which he describes them ; no object is too 
homely to be noticed, or too simple to furnish an apt 
simile. 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 327 

4. Closely connected witb this is the naturalness, the 
simplicity, the naivete of the whole. Many things are 
told and mentioned in the most unconscious way, which 
a later, more conscious age could not notice without 
either coarseness or studied imitation. 

Finally, the minstrel himself lives amidst the natural 
healthy life which he describes ; he is himself a part of it. 

These characteristics of the popular epic are, I need 
hardly say, generalized from the Homeric poems. For 
these afford the highest, most perfect specimen the 
world has seen, or ever will see, of the popular epic — 
of a nation's minstrelsy. Without going here into the 
vexed question of their authorship, whether there was 
one Homer or more, I may say that the fact of such 
poems presupposes a whole world of ballad poetry or 
minstrelsy previously existing, from which the great 
minstrel king, when he arises, takes his traditions, his 
materials, his manner — perhaps many of his verses. 
Such a poem as the Iliad could not rise up, full-fledged 
and perfect, without many shorter and lesser poems go- 
ing before it. A whole atmosphere of antecedent song 
is the very condition of a great popular epic being born. 
But, while saying that Homer's poetry grew out of a 
ballad literature, we must not forget how different it is 
in style from the ballads as we conceive of them. To 
the naturalness, the ease, the rapid flow of the ballad, 
the Homeric genius, using as its vehicle the majestic 
hexameter measure, has added a nobleness, a grandeur, 
which even the best of our ballads have never readied. 

Homer probably lived on the latest verge of the 
heroic age, while its traditions and feelings were still 
fresh in memory, but were ready to vanish away before 
a new age of manners and society. There is in his 



328 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

poems a tone of admiring regret, as he looks back on 
the great champions whom he celebrates. He feelingly 
complains that there are no such men as those nowa 
days. 

In the Iliad the popular epic is seen in its highest, 
most perfect form. And though the world can show 
but one Iliad, yet the primitive ages of other countries 
can show poems which, though vastly inferior to the 
Iliad, are yet in their character and spirit of the same 
order of poetry. The Teutonic race had its Niebelungen 
Lied ; the Celtic its Fingalian battle-songs ; the middle 
age its poems of the Arthurian cycle ; Spain the heroic 
ballads that cluster round the Cid ; and England, though 
it does not possess a national epic, according to the 
form, yet has inherited the substance of it in the grand 
succession of Shakespeare's historical plays, especially 
in Richard II, in Henri/ K, and in Richard III 

From these specimens of the popular epic, turn to 
the literary epics, the ^Eneid, the Jerusalem Delivered, 
the Paradise Lost, and see how entirely different they 
are in origin, in character, in style, and in the spirit 
which animates them. These last are elaborate works 
of art, produced in a later age, by literary men, working 
consciously according to recognized rules, and imitating, 
more or less, ancient models of the primitive time, not 
singing unconsciously and spontaneously as native pas- 
sion dictated. The first lesson the critic has to learn 
is to feel the entire difference of the Iliad and the 
jEneid, — to see how wide a world of thought and feel- 
ing separates the popular or national from the learned 
or literary epic. For, however they may seem to agree 
somewhat in form — and even in form they are distinct 
— in the age which creates each, in the sentiment which 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 329 

animates them, and in the impression they leave on the 
reader, they stand almost as wide apart as any two 
kinds of poetry can do. 

This somewhat long digression into the nature of 
Epic Poetry will not be in vain, if it enables us to see 
how nearly the poetry of Scott approaches the province 
of the popular epic, how true it is that he, more than 
any poet in the English language, — I might say than 
any poet of modern Europe, — has revived the Homeric 
inspiration, and exhibited, even in this late day, some- 
thing of the primitive spirit of Homer. 

How can this be ? perhaps you say. Scott, born in 
literary Edinburgh, within the last thirty years of the 
eighteenth century, where Hume had expounded his 
sceptical philosophy a generation before, where Robert- 
son and Hugh Blair were shedding their literary light 
during his childhood, and Dugald Stewart expounded 
his polished metaphysics over his unregarding boyhood 
• — how could it be that he should be in any other than 
an imitative sense a real rhapsodist, a genuine minstrel 
of the olden stamp? It is a natural question, but one 
to which a little thought will supply an answer. It is 
characteristic of modern Europe, as compared with 
ancient Greece or Rome, that its society is much more 
complex, contains more numerous and diverse elements 
existing side by side, that its cable is composed of many 
different strands twisted into one. Yet even in Greece 
did not Herodotus, with his childlike simplicity, live on 
into the age of the sophists ? Was he not contemporary 
with the reflective Thucydides, father of philosophic 
history ? Still more, in modern nations we find stages 
of society the most diverse, and apparently the most 
opposed, the most primitive simplicity and the most ar- 



330 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

tificial culture, coexisting in the same age, side by side. 
So it was with the Scotland into which Scott was born. 
His native town had, in the sixty years that followed 
the Union, made a wonderful start in elegant literature. 
It contained a coterie of literary men, which rivalled 
Paris for polish and scepticism, London for shrewdness 
and criticism. Yet in Edinburgh, such men were but 
a handful — one cannot be. sure that they are to be taken 
as samples of the mental condition even of educated 
Scots of the day. But if we turn to the country places, 
especially to the remoter districts, we find a wholly 
different condition of society. Over large tracts of 
Scotland, both south and north, though men were 
plying busily their farming or pastoral industries, the 
traditions of former times still prevailed, and formed 
the intellectual atmosphere which they breathed. In 
some places where the Covenant had struck deep root, 
and on which Claverhouse had come down most heavily, 
tales of slaughtered sons of the Covenant, and of the 
cruel persecution, still fed the flame of religious fervor. 
In other places, where the Covenant and its spirit had 
less penetrated, traditions of English invasion and of 
Border feuds and battles were still rife, though a cent- 
ury and a half had passed since the reality had ceased. 
And through all the wilder Highlands, and in a great 
part of the Lowlands, the romantic adventures of the 
Fifteen and the Forty-five, with the stern sufferings 
which followed, were still preserved by the people in 
affectionate though mournful remembrance. 

It was in an atmosphere filled with these elements 
that Scott first began to breathe. He himself tells us 
that it was at Sandyknowe, in the home of his paternal 
grandfather, that he had the first consciousness of exist- 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 331 

ence. Edinburgh was his physical, but Sandyknowe 
his mental birthplace — Sandyknowe, the old farm- 
house on the southern slope of Smailholme Crags, 
crowned with the grim old Peel-tower, commanding so 
brave an outlook over all the storied Border-] and. 
Every one will remember Lockhart's description of 
the scene, and yet so graphic it is, it cannot be here 
omitted : — 

" On the summit of the crags which overhang the farm- 
house stands the ruined tower of Smailholme, the scene of 
The Eve of St. John ; and the view from thence takes in a 
wide expanse of the district in which, as has been truly 
said, every field has it battle, and every rivulet its song. 

' The lady looked in mounful mood, 
Looked over hill and vale, 
O'er Mertoun's wood, and Tweed's fair flood, 
And all down Teviotdale.' 

Mertoun, the principal seat of the Harden family, with its 
noble groves; nearly in front of it, across the Tweed, Les- 
sudden, the comparatively small but still venerable and 
stately abode of the Lairds of Raeburn ; and the hoary 
Abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded with yew-trees ancient as 
itself, seem to lie almost below the feet of the spectator. 
Opposite him rise the purple peaks of Eildon, the traditional 
scene of Thomas the Rhymer's interview with the Queen of 
Faerie; behind are the blasted Peel which the seer of 
Erceldoun himself inhabited, ' the Broom of the Cowden- 
knowes,' the pastoral valley of the Leader, and the bleak 
wilderness of Lammermoor. To the eastward the desolate 
grandeur of Hume Castle breaks the horizon as the eye 
travels towards the range of the Cheviot. A few miles 
westward Melrose, 'like some tall rock with lichens gray,' 
appears clasped amidst the windings of the Tweed ; and the 
distance presents the serrated mountains of the Gala, the 
Ettrick, and the Yarrow, all famous in song. Such were 



332 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT • 

the objects that had painted the earliest images on the eye 
of the last and greatest of the Border minstrels." 

To this beautiful description there is but one draw- 
back. " Serrated " is the last epithet which should have 
been chosen to describe the rounded, soft and flowing 
outlines of the hills that cradle Ettrick and Yarrow. 

His human teachers were his grandmother by her 
parlor fire, with her old gudeman seated on the arm- 
chair opposite, while she told to the grave three-years' 
child at her feet many a tale of Watt of Harden, Wight 
Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead, 
and other heroes, whose wild Border forays were still 
fresh in memory ; his aunt, Miss Janet Scott, who 
taught him old ballads before he could read — among 
others, that of Hardiknute, " the first poem I ever 
learnt, the last I shall ever forget ; " " Auld Sandy 
Ormistoun," the shepherd, or " cow-bailie," who used 
to carry him on his shoulder up the Smailholme Crags, 
and leave him on the grass all day long to play with 
the sheep and lambs, till the child and they became 
friends. Could there be more fitting nursery for a poet- 
child ? The infant on the green ledges of Smailholme 
Crags, rolling among the lambs, while his eye wandered 
lovingly over that delightful land ! Or forgotten among 
the knolls, when the thunder-storm came on, and found 
by his affrighted aunt lying on his back, clapping his 
hands at the lightning, and crying out, " Bonny, bonny ! " 
at every flash, brave child that he was ! The old shep- 
herd poured into his ear his own wealth of stories and 
legends, and no doubt pointed, as he spoke, to many 
a spot where the scenes were transacted, lying at their 
feet ; and when summer was past, and the child could 
no longer roll on the grass out of doors, the long winter 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 333 

nights by the fireside were beguiled by the telling of the 
same tales, the recitation of the same or of still fresh 
store of ballads. Thus eye and ear alike were steeped in 
the most warlike traditions of the Border and of Scotland, 

— the human teachers pouring them daily into the ear 
of the child, while the far sweep of storied Tweeddale 
and Teviotdale appealed no less powerfully to his eye. 
Add to this, that never was child born more susceptible 
of such impressions — that between these and the soul 
of Scott there was a preestablished harmony — and 
have we not, even in the midst of the eighteenth century, 
the very materials out of which is fashioned a true epic 
minstrel ? 

Then, when he passed from childhood to boyhood, 
and read at random every book he could lay hands on, 
there was one book which struck deeper than all the 
rest, and kindled to new life those treasures of legend 
and ballad which had lain embedded in his mind since 
infancy. Every one will remember his own description 

— how he lay through the long summer afternoon be- 
neath a huge platanus-tree in the garden, overhanging 
the Tweed, and read for the first time Percy's Reliques 
of Ancient Poetry ; and with him, when anything ar- 
rested his imagination, to read and to remember were 
one. 

The publication of Percy's Reliques marked the first 
turning of the tide of literary taste back to a land 
whence it had long receded. It was, as has been said, 
the earliest symptom in England of " a fonder, more 
earnest looking back to the past, which began about 
that time to manifest itself in all nations." Percy and 
others, who then began those backward looks, had to 
gaze at the old time across an interval of perhaps two 



334 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

centuries. In the case of Scott, the past had come 
down to him in an unbroken succession of traditions 
and personages. First were the inmates of Sandy- 
knowe, among whom he spent his childhood. Then 
came his intercourse with Stewart of Invernahyle, 
when as a boy he first penetrated the Highlands to 
share the hospitality of that laird, who had himself 
fought a broadsword duel with Rob Roy, and had served 
in the Fifteen under Mar, and in the Forty-five under 
Prince Charles Edward. Lastly, in early manhood he 
traversed Ettrick Forest, and made those raids, during 
seven successive years, into Liddesdale and many an- 
other Border dale, whence he returned laden with that 
spoil of the old riding ballads, which now live secured 
to all time in his Border Minstrelsy. In those and in 
other ways Scott came face to face with the feudal 
and heroic past — a past which was then on the eve of 
disappearing, and which, had he been born thirty years 
later, might have disappeared forever, and no one to 
record it. With that past, before it was wholly past, 
he came in contact, as did countless others of his gen- 
eration ; but the contact would have been as little to 
him as it was to his contemporaries, had he not been 
gifted with the eye to see, and the soul to feel it. Scott 
had born in him the heroic soul, the epic inspiration ; 
and the circumstances in which his childhood and youth 
were cast supplied the fuel to feed the name. The fuel 
and the flame were long pent up together, long smoul- 
dered within, before they blazed out to the world. Scott 
was past thirty when he published the Minstrelsy, and 
at the close of the work he gave original ballads of 
his own, which were the first notes of the fuller song 
that was to follow. Eminent among these ballads is 



IN WALTER SCOTT 335 

The Eve of St. John, in which Scott repeoples the 
tower of Smailholme, and consecrates forever the 
haunt of his infancy. In this he gave a sample of the 
genius that was in him, and, as an expression of old 
Border heroism daunted before conscience and the un- 
seen world, he himself has never surpassed, and none 
other has equalled it. But it is not only the original 
ballads which he contributed to the Minstrelsy, excel- 
lent as these are, which show what was the deepest 
bias of his poetic nature. At the time when the book 
first appeared, one of its critics prophetically said that 
it contained " the elements of a hundred historical 
romances ; " and Lockhart has noted that no one who 
has not gone over the Minstrelsy for the purpose of 
comparing its contents with his subsequent works can 
conceive to what an extent it has been the quarry out 
of which he has dug the materials of all his after crea- 
tions. Of many of the incidents and images which are 
elaborated in these latter works, the first hints may 
be found either in those old primitive ballads, or in 
the historical and legendary notices which accompany 
them. 

We thus have in "Walter Scott a spirit in itself natu- 
rally of the heroic or epic order, waking up to its first 
consciousness in a secluded district, which was still redo- 
lent of traditions of the old feudal and fighting times — 
meeting in his boyhood with the first turn of that tide 
which, setting towards the neglected past, he himself 
was destined to carry to full flood ; spending all the 
leisure of his youth and early manhood in gathering 
from the Southern dales every ballad, Border song, or 
romantic legend that was still lingering there; — now 
and then trying with some stave of his own to match 



336 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

those wild native chants that had charmed his ear and 
imagination ; and living and finding his delight in this 
enchanted world till past the mature age of thirty. Is 
there not here, if anywhere for the last three hundred 
years, the nurture and training of the genuine rhapso- 
dist ? When, after such long and loving abode in that 
dreamland, his mind addressed itself to original crea- 
tion, it was not with any mere literary or simulated fer- 
vor, but out of the fulness of an overflowing heart, that 
he poured forth his first immortal Lay. In that poem 
the treasured dreams of years first found a voice, the 
stream that had been so long pent up at last flowed full 
and free. Arnold used to say — and the late Dean Stan- 
ley, in the inimitable outburst with which he thrilled his 
hearers at the Scott Centenary, repeated the saying — 
that the world has seen nothing so truly Homeric, since 
the days of Homer, as those opening lines of the Lay, 
in which Scott describes the custom of Branksome 

Hall, 

" Nine-and-twenty knights of fame." 

If anywhere the ballad metre has risen to the true epic 
pitch, it is in the concentrated fire and measured tread 
of those noble stanzas. Nor less in the true heroic 
style is the description of Deloraine's nightly ride from 
Branksome to Melrose. In those lines, especially, as 
indeed throughout all that poem, Scott at last found a 
fit poetic setting for all those dear localities, over which 
his eye had dreamed, as he lay an infant on Smailholme 
crags, which he had traversed on foot and horseback in 
his boyish wanderings, or in those raids of early man- 
hood, in which he bore back from Liddesdale and Esk- 
dale his booty of ancient ballads, with as much zest as 
ever moss-trooper drove a prey from the English Border. 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 337 

In his descriptioDs of the feudal and battle time, the 
usages of chivalry and the rites of the medieval Church 
are everywhere introduced ; for these are the true mod- 
ern representatives of the Homeric rites and priests, 
and blazing hecatombs. Not otherwise except in this 
their native garb could the heroic times of modern Eu- 
rope be truly rendered into poetry. Chivalry, romance, 
and mediaeval beliefs were the real accompaniments of 
our heroic times, and if these were discarded for what 
are thought to be more classical garniture, you might 
have a modern imitation of the ancient Homeric poem ; 
but so genuine heroic poetry, standing to our age in 
something of the same relation as Homer's poetry stood 
to later Grecian life. 

If Scott had been asked, when he was writing his 
poem, to what class or style of poetry his belonged, 
likely enough he would have smiled, and said that he 
never troubled himself with such questions, but sang as 
he listed, and let the form take care of itself. In fact, 
in the advertisement to Marmion he actually disavows 
any attempt on his part to write an epic poem. But 
it is the very spontaneity, the absence of all artistic 
consciousness, which forms one of his greatest poetic 
charms, compensating for much that might, on merely 
artistic and literary grounds, be lightly esteemed. And 
it is this spontaneity, this naturalness of treatment, this 
absence of effort, which marks out Scott's poetry as be- 
longing essentially to the popular, and having little iu 
common with the literary epic. This welling forth of 
an overflowing heart characterizes the Lay more than 
any of his subsequent poems, and imparts to it a charm 
all its own. Hence it is that lovers of Scott revert, I 
think, to the Lay with a greater fondness than to any 



333 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

of his other productions, though in some of these they 
acknowledge that there are merits which the Lay has 
not. Of course, little as Scott may have troubled him- 
self about it, his poetry had a very decided form of its 
own, as all poetry must have. It was formed, as his 
mind had been, on the old Border ballad, with some in- 
termixture of the mediaeval romance ; and the earlier 
cantos of the Lay were touched by some remembrance 
of Christabel, which, however, died away before the 
end of the poem, and did not reappear in any subse- 
quent one. 

But though the Lay here and there rises into a truly 
epic strain, it is in Marmion that whatever was epic in 
Scott found fullest vent. In that, his second poetic 
work, he had chosen a national and truly heroic action, 
as the centre or climax of the whole poem — the battle 
of Flodden — an event second only to that still greater 
battle which he essayed to sing at a later day, and in a 
feebler tone. Flodden had been the most grievous 
blow that Scotland ever received, It had cost her the 
lives of her chivalrous king, and of the flower of all the 
Scottish nobility, gentry, and men-at-arms. It had 
pierced the national heart with an overpowering sorrow, 
so pervading and so deep that no other event, not even 
Culloden, ever equalled it. It had lived on in remem- 
brance down to Scott's boyhood as a source of the most 
pathetic refrains that ever blended with the people's 
songs. When, therefore, he addressed himself to it he 
had a subject which, though old, was still fresh in re- 
membrance, and full of all that epic and tragic interest 
which a great poem requires. He was aware of the 
greatness of the theme, and he tells us that he set to it, 
resolved to bestow on it more labor than he had yet done 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 339 

on his productions, and that particular passages of the 
poem were elaborated with a good deal of care by one 
by whom much care was seldom bestowed. Through- 
out, the poem has more of epic stateliness, if it wants 
some other graces of the Lay. From beginning to end, 
it rises now into the epic pitch, then recedes from it 
into the romantic, sometimes falls into the prosaic, then 
rises into the epic again, up to the grand close. The 
passages in which the heroic gleams out most clearly 
are such as these : — the well-known opening stanzas 
describing Marmion's approach to Norham at sunset ; 
the muster of the Scottish army on the Borough muir 
before marching to Flodden ; and, above all, the whole 
last canto, in which the battle itself is depicted. It is 
on this last that Scott put out all his strength, and by 
this canto, if by anything in his poetry, it is that his 
claim to the epic laurel should be judged. Before reach- 
ing this last culmination, the poem had wound on, now 
high, now low, spirited or tame, in stately or in homely 
strain. But from the moment that the poet gets in sight 
of Flodden, and sees the English army defiling through 
the deep ravine of Till, while the Scots from the ridge 
above gaze idly on — from that moment to the close, 
he soars steadily on the full pinion of epic poetry. 

It was a fine thought to describe the great battle, not 
from the thick of the melee, but as seen by Clara and 
the two pages from a vantage-ground apart. This does 
not diminish one whit the animation of the scene, yet 
greatly enhances the totality and perfection of the 
picture. It is needless to quote lines which every one 
who cares for such things knows by heart. But the 
passage beginning with — 



340 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

"At length the freshening western blast 
Aside the shroud of battle cast; " 

and the one following, which thus opens : — 

"Far on the lefr, unseen the while, 
Stanley broke Lennox and Argyle ; ' ' 

ending with that so powerful incident — 

" When, fast as shaft can fly, 
Bloodshot his eyes, his nostrils spread, 
The loose rein dangling from his head, 
Housing and saddle bloody red, 
Lord Marmion's steed rushed by ; " 

and last of all, the picture of the desperate ring that 
fought and died, but did not yield, around their gallant 
king. To find any battle scenes that can match with 
these we must go back to those of the Iliad. As far as 
I know, the poetry of no land, in the interval between 
Homer and Scott, can show anything that can be placed 
by their side. 

Perhaps we may find the best counterpart to these 
passages of Scott in the sixteenth book of the Iliad, 
where Patroclus does on the armor of Achilles and 
comes to the rescue of the Achaian host. 

Take that passage where Hector and Patroclus close 
in mortal conflict over the dead body of Cebriones, 
charioteer of Hector : — 

"Upon Cebriones Patroclus sprang, 
Down from his car too Hector leaped to earth, 
So over Cebriones opposed they stood ; 
As on the mountain, o'er a slaughtered stag, 
Both hunger-pinched, two lions fiercely fight, 
So o'er Cebriones two mighty chiefs, 
Menoetius' son and noble Hector, strove, 
Each in the other bent to plunge his spear. 
The head, with grasp unyielding, Hector held; 
Patroclus seized the foot ; and, crowding round, 
Trojans and Greeks in stubborn conflict closed. 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 341 

As when encountering in some mountain glen, 
Eurus and Notus shake the forest deep, 
Of oak, or ash, or slender cornel-tree, 
"Whose tapering branches are together thrown 
With fearful din and crash of broken boughs ; 
So, mixed confusedly, Greeks and Trojans fought, 
No thought of flight by either entertained. 
Thick o'er Cebriones the javelins flew, 
And feathered arrows bounding from the string, 
And ponderous stones that on the bucklers rang, 
As round the dead they fought ; amid the dust 
That eddying rose, his art forgotten all, 
A mighty warrior, mightily he lay." 

Those only who have read the original know how 
much it loses both in vividness of edge and in swinging 
power, when dulled down into the blank verse of the 
translation. To the English reader, Lord Derby's verse 
sounds flat and tame compared with the rapid and ring- 
ing octosyllabics of Scott, when he is at his best, as in 
his description of Flodden. And yet Scott's best eight- 
syllable lines may not compare with 

" The long resounding march and energy divine " 
of the Homeric hexameters. 

It will be said, I am aware, that in Scott's romantic 
poems, though heroic subjects are handled, yet " neither 
the subject nor the form rises to the true dignity of the 
epic." That they are regular epics, as these are defined 
by the canons of the critics, no one would contend. But 
that they abound in the epic element, as no other Eng- 
lish poems abound, cannot be gainsaid. In subject, 
neither Marmion nor The Lord of the Isles falls below 
the epic pitch, unless it be that the whole history of 
Scotland is inadequate to furnish material for an epic. 
And as to form, if the large admixture of romantic in- 
cident and treatment be held to mar the epic dignity, 



342 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

this does not hinder that these poems rise to the true 
epic height, in such passages as the battle of Flodden, 
and the priest's benediction of the Bruce. 

It would be a pleasant task to go through the other 
poems of Scott, laying one's finger on the scenes and 
passages in which the epic fire most clearly breaks out ; 
and showing how epically conceived many of his heroes 
are, with what entire sympathy he thew himself into 
the heroic character. But this task cannot be attempted 
now. Suffice it that in The Lady of the Lake, though 
its tone is throughout more romantic than epic, yet 
there are true gleams of heroic fire, as in the Gather- 
ing ; still stronger in the combat between Roderick and 
Fitz James, and again in that battle-stave which the bard 
sings to the dying Roderick, in which occur these two 
lines, breathing the very spirit of Homer himself : — 

" 'Twere worth ten years of peaceful life, 
One glance at their array ! ' 

In his last long poem Scott essayed a subject more 
fitted for a national epic than any other which the his- 
tory of either Scotland or England supplies — the wan- 
derings of Bruce and his ultimate victory at Bannock- 
burn. Delightful as The Lord of the Isles in many of 
its parts is, I cannot agree with Lockhart's estimate of 
it, when he says, that " the Battle of Bannockburn, now 
that we can compare these works from something like 
the same point of view, does not appear to me in the 
slightest particular inferior to the Flodden of Mar- 
mion." This will hardly be the verdict of posterity. 
It was not to be expected that the same poet should 
describe in full two such battles with equal vigor and 
effect. There is a fire and a swing about the former, a 
heroic spirit in the short octosyllabics describing Flod- 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 343 

den, which we look for in vain in the careful and almost 
too historic accuracy of the earlier battle. Flodden, the 
less likely of the two themes to kindle a Scottish poet's 
enthusiasm, in order of poetic composition, came first. 
Scott was then in the prime of his poetic ardor. When 
he touched Bruce and Bannockburn that noon was past ; 
he was tired of the trammels of metre, and was hasten- 
ing on to his period of prose creation. Had he, on the 
contrary, begun with Bruce, and given him the full force 
of his earlier inspiration, he would no doubt have made 
out of the adventures of the great national hero the 
great epic poem of Scotland, which The Lord of the Isles 
can hardly claim to be. There is no subject in all his- 
tory more fitted for epic treatment ; it requires no fiction 
to adorn it. The character of Bruce, the events of his 
wanderings, as described by Barbour, in the mountain 
wilds, through which the outlawed king passed, where 
tradition still preserves the track of his footsteps, — 
these in themselves are enough. They need no added 
fiction, but only the true singer to come in the prime of 
inspiration, and render them as they deserve. What- 
ever similarity may exist between Homer and Scott 
must have come from intrinsic likeness of genius, not 
from conscious imitation. For Scott is said to have 
been so innocent of any knowledge of Greek, that the 
light of Homer could only have reached him, dimly re- 
flected, from the horn lanterns of Pope's or Cowper's 
translations. The similarity is not confined only to the 
spirit by which the two poets are animated. It comes 
out not less strikingly in small details of mannner — in 
tfie constant epithets, for instance, by which Scott de- 
scribes his heroes, " the doughty Douglas," " the bold 
Buccleuch," " William of Deloraine, good at need." It 



344 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

is seen, too, in the plain yet picturesque epithets with 
which Scott hits off the distinctive character of places. 
Who that has sailed among the Hebrides but must at 
once feel the graphic force of such expressions as 
" lonely Colonsay," " the sandy Coll," " Ronin's mount- 
ains dark " ? 

Space has not allowed me to touch, much less ex 
haust, the many phases of Scott's poems, in which the 
heroic element appears. The Homeric spirit which 
breathes through his novels I have not even alluded to. 
But I would suggest it as a pleasant and instructive 
task to any one who cares for such things, to read once 
again the Waverley novels, noting, as he passes, the 
places where the Homeric vein most distinctly crops 
out. In such a survey we should take the Homeric 
vein in its widest range, as it appears in the romantic 
adventures and beautiful home-pictures of the Odyssey, 
not less than in the battle scenes of the Iliad. 

Scott's earliest novel supplies much that recalls Odys- 
sey and Iliad alike. In the Charge of Preston-pans, 
" ' Down with your plaids,' cries Fergus Maclvor, 
throwing his own. ' We '11 win silks for our tartans, be- 
fore the sun is above the sea.' . . . The vapors rose 
like a curtain, and showed the two armies in the act of 
closing." Again, in a story so near our own day as 
that of The Antiquary, with what grand relief comes in 
the old background of the heroic time, behind the more 
modern characters and incidents, when the aged croon 
Elspeth is overheard in her cottage chanting her old- 
world snatches about the Earl of Glenallan and the red 
Harlaw, where Celt and Saxon fought out their contro- 
versy, from morn till evening, a whole summer's day ! 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 345 

" Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle, 
And listen, great and sma', 
And I will sing of Glenallan's Earl, 
That fought on the red Harlaw. 

" The coronach 's cried on Bennachie, 
And doun the Don and a' 
And Hieland and Lawland may mornfu' be 
For the sair field of Harlaw ! " 

Or I might point to another of the more modern 
novels, to Redgauntlet, and Wandering Willie's Tale. 
Every one should remember — yet perhaps some forget 
— auld Steenie's visit to the nether world, and the 
sight he got of that set of ghastly revellers sitting round 
the table there. " My gude sire kend mony that had 
long before gane to their place, for often had he piped 
to the most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was 
. . . And there was Claverhonse, as beautiful as when he 
lived, with his long, dark, curled locks, streaming down 
over his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his 
right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet 
had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at 
them with a melancholy, haughty countenance ; while 
the rest hallooed, and sung, and laughed, that the room 
rang." Turn to the novel, and read the whole scene. 
There is nothing in the Odyssean Tartarus to equal it. 
If Scott is not Homeric here, he is something more. 
There is in that weird ghastly vision a touch of sublime 
horror, to match which we must go beyond Homer, to 
Dante, or to Shakespeare. 

Moralists before now have asked, What has Scott 
done by all this singing about battles, and knights, and 
chivalry, but merely amuse his fellow-men ■? Has he 
m any way really elevated and improved them ? It 
might be enough to answer this question by saying, 



346 THE HOMERIC SPIRIT 

that of all writers in verse or prose, he has done most 
to make us understand history, to let in light and sym- 
pathy upon a wide range of ages, which had become 
dumb and meaningless to men, and which but for him 
might have continued so still. 

But I shall not answer it only in this indirect way. 
It has been too pertinaciously and pointedly asked to 
be put thus aside. 

Wordsworth is reported to have said in conversation 
that, as a poet, Scott cannot live, for he has never writ- 
ten anything addressed to the immortal part of man. 
This he said of his poetry, while speaking more highly 
of his prose writings. Carlyle, on the other hand, has 
included both Scott's prose and his poetry under the 
same condemnation. He has said that our highest lit- 
erary man had no message whatever to deliver to the 
world ; wished not the world to elevate itself, to amend 
itself, to do this or that, except simply to give him, for 
the books he kept writing, payment, which he might 
button into his breeches pocket. All this moralizing 
bears somewhat hard upon Scott. Is it true ? Is it 
the whole truth ? Is there nothing to be set over 
against it ? On Scott's side, may it not be said, that it 
is no small thing to have been the writer who, above all 
others, has delighted childhood and boyhood, delighted 
them and affected them in a way that the self-conscious 
moralizing school of writers never could do ? There 
must be something high or noble in that, which can so 
take unsophisticated hearts. In his later days Scott is 
reported to have asked Laidlaw what he thought the 
moral influence of his writings had been. Laidlaw 
well replied that his works were the delight of the 
young, and that to have so reached their hearts was 



IN WALTER SCOTT. 347 

surely a good work to have done. Scott was affected 
almost to tears, as well he might be. Again, not the 
young only, but of the old, those who have kept them- 
selves most childlike, who have carried the boy's heart 
with them farthest into life, — they have loved Scott's 
poetry, even to the end. Something of this, no doubt, 
may be attributed to the pleasure of reverting in age to 
the things that have delighted our boyhood. But would 
the best and purest men have cared to do this, if the 
things which delighted their boyhood had not been 
worthy ? It is the great virtue of Scott's poetry, and of 
his novels also, that, quite forgetting self, they describe 
man and outward nature broadly, truly, genially, as 
they are. All contemporary poetry, indeed all contem- 
porary literature, goes to work in the exactly opposite 
direction, shaping men and things after patterns self- 
originated from within, describing and probing human 
feelings and motives with an analysis so searching, that 
all manly impulse withers before it, and single-hearted 
straightforwardness becomes a thing impossible. Against 
this whole tendency of modern poetry and fiction, so 
weakening, so morbidly self-conscious, so unhealthily 
introspective, what more effective antidote than the 
bracing atmosphere of Homer, and Shakespeare, and 
Scott ? 

Lastly, it may be said, the feelings to which Scott's 
poetry appeals, the ideals which it sets before the imag- 
ination, if not themselves the highest types of charac- 
ter, are those out of which the highest characters are 
formed, Cardinal Newman has said, " What is Chris- 
tian high-mindedness, generous self-denial, contempt of 
wealth, endurance of suffering, and earnest striving 
after perfection, but an improvement and transforma- 



348 HOMERIC SPIRIT IN WALTER SCOTT. 

tion, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, of that 
natural character of mind which we call romantic?" 
To have awakened and kept alive in an artificial and too 
money-loving age " that character of mind which we 
call romantic," which, by transformation, can become 
something so much beyond itself, is, even from the 
severest moral point of view, no mean merit. To higher 
than this few poets can lay claim. But let the critics 
praise him, or let them blame. It matters not. His 
reputation will not wane, but will grow with time. 
Therefore we do well to make much of Walter Scott. 
He is the only Homer who has been vouchsafed to 
Scotland — I might almost say to modern Europe. He 
came at the latest hour when it was possible for a great 
epic minstrel to be born. And the altered conditions of 
the world will not admit of another. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

PROSE POETS : THOMAS CARLYLE. 

Prose, Coleridge used to say, is the opposite, not of 
poetry, but of verse or metre — a doctrine which, how- 
ever contrary to common parlance, commends itself at 
once to all who think about it. 

If, as I have been accustomed in these lectures to 
say, " poetry is the expression, in beautiful form and 
melodious language, of the best thoughts and the no- 
blest emotions, which the spectacle of life awakens in 
the finest souls," it is clear that this may be effected by 
prose as truly as by verse, if only the language be rhyth- 
mical and beautiful. 

I was pleased to find the same view taken by my 
friend Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, in an essay which he 
has lately published on English Verse, an essay which, 
for its suggestiveness and subtlety of thought, may be 
commended to all who are curious in these matters. In 
that essay he says, " Metre is not necessary to poetry, 
while poetry is necessary to metre." Again, " Prose, 
when it rises into poetry, becomes as nearly musical as 
language without metre can be ; it becomes rhyth- 
mical." 

But I need not enlarge on this view, or quote author- 
ities in favor of it. Every one must remember sen- 
tences in his favorite prose-writers, which, for their 
beauty, dwell upon the memory, like the immortal lines 
of the great poets, or passages of the finest music. 



350 PROSE POETS, 

Who does not recall words of Plato, such as the de- 
scription of the scenery in the opening of the Phaedrus> 
or in the same dialogue the vision of the procession of 
the Twelve Immortals, or the closing scene in the 
Phaedo, or a passage here and there in the Republic, 
or in the Theaetetus, which haunt him with the same 
feeling of melody as that with which famous lines in 
Homer or in Shakespeare haunt us? 

Again, Tacitus is generally set down as a rhetorician, 
and no doubt he had caught much of his manner from 
the schools of the rhetoricians. But there is in him 
something more, something peculiarly his own, which 
is of the true essence of poetry — his few condensed 
clauses, hinting all the sadness and hopelessness of his 
time, or the vivid scenes he paints so full of human 
pathos. Such is the description of Vitellius as he 
walked forth from his palace to meet his doom. The 
" nee quisquam adeo rerum humanarum immemor, quern 
non commoveret ilia facies " lingers in the mind in the 
same way as Virgil's 

" Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt." 

In French literature you find a truer poetry both of 
thought and language in some of the best prose-writers, 
than in any of the so-called French poets. Such pas- 
sages, so beautiful in thought, so sweet in expression, 
occur in Pascal of the elder writers, in Maurice de 
Guerin of the moderns. 

Among our own elder prose-writers, two may be 
named, who break out, every here and there, into as 
real poetry, both in substance, and in form, as any of 
the metrical poets of their time ; Bishop Jeremy Taylor, 
and Sir Thomas Browne, author of the Religio Medici. 

There is a passage in the late Mr. Keble's Praelec- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 351 

Hones Academicae, in which he compares one of those 
poetical prose passages from Jeremy Taylor's writings, 
with a well-known passage from Burke's Reflections on 
the French Revolution, describing Marie Antoinette as 
she appeared for the first time in Paris, and for the 
last. The purpose with which Keble compares the two 
passages is to show the difference between a thought 
which is only eloquently expressed and one which is 
truly poetical. 

What is the distinction between the highest eloquence 
and true poetry is an interesting question, but not one 
to detain us now. Perhaps, in passing, one may say 
that in eloquence, whatever imagination is allowed to 
enter is kept consciously and carefully subordinate to 
an ulterior object, either to convince the hearers of 
some truth, or to persuade them to some course of ac- 
tion. On the other hand, when in prose composition 
the whole or any part of it is felt to be poetical, the 
thoughts which are poetical appear to be dwelt upon 
for the pure imaginative delight they yield, for their 
inherent truth, or beauty, or interest, without reference 
to anything beyond. If the writer is more intent on 
the effect he wishes to produce than on the imaginative 
delight of the thought he utters, it then ceases to be 
true poetry. 

It is characteristic of our modern literature that at 
no former period have so many men, richly endowed 
with the poetic gift, expressed themselves through the 
medium of prose. Why it should be so may well be 
asked; but the answer to the question given by Carlyle, 
that the metrical form is an anachronism, — that verse 
as the vehicle of true thought, and feeling is a thing of 
the past, — cannot, I think, be accepted. It is one of 



352 PROSE POETS. 

the many strong, one-sided statements, in which Car- 
lyle was wont to indulge, from judging all things by his 
own idiosyncrasy. He himself was but a poor per- 
former in verse, as may be seen from his few attempts 
at metrical rendering of German lyrics. But this de- 
fect in him cannot change the fact that there are shades 
of thought and tones of feeling for which metre will al- 
ways continue to be the most natural vehicle, to those 
at least who have the gift of using it. 

Great poets who have expressed themselves in verse 
are, as we have often seen, possessed by some great 
truth, inspired, as we say, by some master-vision, which 
fills their whole soul. To see such a vision is the poet's 
nature, to utter it is his office. If this be the case with 
metrical poets, it is not less, but rather more true of 
those whom we call prose poets. Some aspect of things 
they have been permitted to see, some truths have 
come home to them with peculiar power, till their 
hearts are all aglow, and they long to utter them. In 
truth, the prose poet must be more fully possessed, 
more intensely inspired by the truth which he sees, 
than the metrical poet need be, in order to fuse and 
mould his more intractable material of prose language 
into that rhythmical, melodious cadence, which we feel 
to be poetry. It will be our duty in the sequel to note 
some of those great primal truths by which prose poets 
have been possessed, in order that we may see how 
essentially poetical has been the way in which they ex- 
pressed them. 

In dwelling upon Carlyle as such a prose poet, those 
of us who are old enough cannot but look back — 
so strange it seems — to the time when his light first 
dawned on the literary world, a wonder and a bewilder- 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 353 

ment. Not that his first appearance was hailed with 
any noise or loud acclaim. Unobserved, almost silent, 
his first reception was recognized only by one or two 
here and there, who had some special means of know- 
ing about him. I can remember his French Revolution 
being, for the first time, put into my hands when a boy, 
in a country house, by one who knew something of him. 
" Here is a strange book, written by a strange man, who 
is a friend of some of our family." I opened it, and 
read some chapter styled " Symbolic," which, if at the 
time wholly unintelligible, still left behind it a sting of 
curiosity. 

Again, the young Glasgow Professor of Greek, newly 
come from the first place in the Cambridge Classical 
Tripos, and fresh from the society of the Cambridge 
Apostles, told how he had lately heard Carlyle lecture 
upon Heroes, more like a man inspired than any one he 
had ever listened to. Then early in the 1840's, when 
the Miscellanies appeared, and became known to under- 
graduates here in Oxford, I remember how they reached 
the more active-minded, one by one, and thrilled them 
as no printed book ever before had thrilled them. 
The very spot one can recall, where certain passages 
first flashed upon the mind, and stamped themselves 
indelibly on the memory. Indeed, it used to be said, 
and I believe with truth, that, with but few exceptions, 
none of the abler young men of that date escaped be- 
ing, for a time at least, Carlyle-bitten. What exactly 
he taught us, what new doctrine he brought, or whether 
he brought any new doctrine at all, we perhaps did not 
care to ask. Only this we knew, that he had a way of 
looking at things which was altogether new, that his 
words penetrated and stirred us, as no other words did. 

23 



354 PROSE POETS. 

What there was of true or false, of one-sided or exag- 
gerated, in his teaching, what of good or of evil, we 
could not measure then — perhaps it would not be easy 
to measure now. But to him we owed exaltations of 
spirit more high, depressions more profound, than we 
had ever known before, — wild gleams of unearthly 
light, alternating with baleful glooms. " He has given 
most of us a bad half-hour," one has lately said; more 
than half-hours he gave to many. In what directions 
he affected young minds, how his burning thoughts 
mingled with the tenor of their thoughts, it were hard 
to say ; only somehow they did ; and these men held on 
their way, most of them modified, but not revolutionized, 
not wholly driven from their path, by having passed 
through the tempestuous fire-atmosphere, in which Car- 
lyle had for a time enveloped them. 

One or two there were, the noblest of their gener- 
ation, who took Carlyle not only for a prophet, as others 
did, but for the prophet, the only prophet then alive. 
To them he seemed the man of all men living who had 
truly read the secret of the world, who had spoken the 
deepest word about human life, and the universe which 
encompasses it. Feeling intensely the truth and the 
power of his teaching in certain directions in which he 
was well at home, they took him to be equally wise, 
because his words were equally strong, in other direc- 
tions in which he was not at all at home, in which, to 
say truth, he had little insight. And giving over to 
his guidance their noble and too confiding natures, they 
broke with all traditions and beliefs of the past, burst 
away from their natural surroundings, and followed him 
out into the wildernes , to find there no haven of rest, 
but only the vagueness of his so-called " immensities,'' 
and k ' eternities," and abysses fathomless. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 355 

It is hard to think of these things, and not to feel 
some indignation, that such noble spirits should have 
trusted him so unreservedly. They would not have 
done so, had they lived longer, and been permitted to 
see the whole man, as his self -revelations have lately 
forced us to see him. Comments more than enough 
have been made, and will yet be made on these, and 
I refrain from adding to them. But as we have from 
his other works long known his strength, in these last 
we see his weakness ; if we have hitherto owned his 
unique powers, these bring home his no less marked lim- 
itations. They make us feel that a prophet universal he 
could not be, that he could not see life and the world 
steadily and see them whole, who, from his peculiar con- 
stitution and temperament, looked at them through 
such a dismal and distorting atmosphere, whose habitual 
element was so deep a gloom. Some imagined that he 
had come to be the revealer of a new morality, higher 
and nobler than Christianity. It is now plain that, as 
to his theory, the best truths he taught so powerfully are 
essential parts of Christianity, lie at the base of it, and 
of all spiritual religion ; while in actual practice, so far 
from having exhausted its teaching, and passed beyond 
it, he, like most of his neighbors, fell far enough short 
of the full Christian stature. We now see plainly 
enough that Carlyle's teaching, so far from discrediting, 
serves only to exalt the Christian ideal by the contrast 
which it suggests. 

But though it is true that Carlyle's whole view of 
things no reasonable man can adopt; though his one-sided 
idiosyncrasy shut him out from all possibility of being 
accepted as a universal teacher, it did not hinder, rather 
it helped, his seeing the truths and things which he did 



356 PROSE POETS. 

see, with an intense insight which few men possess, 
and uttering them with a force which still fewer are 
capable of. As he looked out from his own solitary 
soul upon the universe, it seemed to him all one great 
black element encompassing him, lit only, here and 
there, with central spots of exceeding brightness. On 
these he fixed his gaze, and these he made other men 
see and feel, with something of that vividness with 
which they shone for himself. As a sample of his 
power to render poetically a human countenance, take 
this description of Dante, — 

" To me it is a most touching face ; perhaps of all faces 
that I know, the most so. Blank there, painted on vacancy, 
with the simple laurel wound round it ; the deathless sorrow 
and pain, the known victory which is also deathless ; sig- 
nificant of the whole history of Dante ! I think it is the 
mournfullest face that ever was painted from reality ; an 
altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as 
foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as 
of a child; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contra- 
diction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A 
soft ethereal soul looking out so stern, implacable, grim- 
trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice ! 
Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one : the lip 
is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is 
eating out his heart, - — as if it were withal a mean insig- 
nificant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture and 
strangle were greater than it. The face of one wholly in 
protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle, against the 
world, affection all converted into indignation : an impla- 
cable indignation ; slow, equable, implacable, silent, like that 
of a god ! The eye, too, it looks out as in a kind of sur- 
prise, a kind of inquiry, Why the world was of such a sort? 
This is Dante : so he looks, this ' voice of ten silent centu- 
ries,' and sings us 'his mystic unfathomable song.' " 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 357 

But the critics, I observe, have been repeating, one 
after another, that Carlyle was not great as a thinker, 
but only as a word-painter. If by a thinker they mean 
one who can table a well-adjusted theory of the uni- 
verse, in which he can locate every given fact or phe- 
nomenon, such a formula as Mr. Herbert Spencer has 
favored the world with, Carlyle was not such a thinker ; 
no one would have more scornfully rejected the claim to 
be so. But if he is a thinker, who has seen some great 
truths more penetratingly, and has felt them more pro- 
foundly than other men have done, then in this sense a 
thinker Carlyle certainly was. Isolated truths these 
may have been, but isolated truths were all he cared or 
hoped to see : he felt too keenly the mystery of things 
ever to fancy that he or any other man could see them 
all in well-rounded harmony. It was just because he 
saw and felt some truths so keenly, that he was enabled 
to paint them in words so vividly. It was the insight 
that was in him which made him a word-painter ; with- 
out that insight, word-painting becomes a mere trick of 
words. 

The presence of personality, we are told, is that which 
distinguishes literature from science, which is wholly 
impersonal. It is this which gives to the finest litera- 
ture its chief charm, that it is illuminated by the pres- 
ence of an elevated personality, — personality observe, 
not egotism, which is a wholly different and inferior 
thing. Great literature, we may say, is the emanation 
of a noble, or at least of an interesting personality. 

In Carlyle this element of a marked, altogether pecul- 
iar personality was eminently present, and shot itself 
through every word he wrote. 

An Annandale peasant, sprung from' a robust and 



358 PROSE POETS. 

rugged peasant stock, reared in a home in which the 
Bible, especially the Old Testament, was the only book ; 
taught in the parish school, and in such lore as it af- 
forded ; passing thence to Edinburgh University, gath- 
ering such learning as was current then and there, but 
holding his Professors in but little honor, — " hide- 
bound pedants," he somewhere calls them ; an omnivo- 
rous devourer of books, almost exhausting the college 
library ; bursting afterwards into the then almost un- 
known sea of German literature and philosophy, and 
coming back thence to be, after Coleridge, its next in- 
terpreter to his countrymen ; — such was the intellectual 
outfit with which he had to face the world. To a Scot- 
tish rustic, with brains, but no funds, who had received 
a college training, there were at that time only two out- 
lets possible — the Church or teaching. From the for- 
mer partly Carlyle's own questioning and not too docile 
nature, partly his newly-acquired German lights, wholly 
excluded him. The latter, or the gerund-grinding busi- 
ness, as he called it, he tried but hated, and spurned 
from him as contemptuously as if he had been the 
haughtiest of born aristocrats. 

Then followed some years of idleness, ill-health, and 
apparent aimlessness ; during which, however, he was 
waging grim conflict with manifold doubts, with dark- 
ness as of the nether pit. The final issue of the long 
and desperate struggle is recorded symbolically in Sartor 
Resartus ; and the climax or ultimate turning-point of 
the whole is that strange incident in the Rue St. Thomas 
de l'Enfer, which happened to himself, he tells us, quite 
literally in Leith Walk. That he then and there 
wrestled down once and for all "the Everlasting No," 
he verily believed. Yet " the Everlasting Yea," whicli 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 359 

he thought he found on the farther side, whatever it 
may have been, never seems to have brought assured 
peace to his spirit, never to have fully convinced him 
that he was in a world ruled by One who has " good 
will towards men." Peace indeed was not one of those 
things which he deemed attainable, or even much to be 
desired, except by craven spirits. 

But meanwhile, whatever else remained unsettled, 
that which Coleridge calls the Bread and Butter ques- 
tion could not be put by, but imperiously demanded an 
answer. The only way of solving it that now remained 
open to him was literature. But even here the path 
for him was hemmed in by high and narrow walls. To 
write supply for demand, to say the thing that would 
please the multitude and command sale, to batter his 
brains into bannocks, — against this his whole nature 
rebelled. Something, he felt, was burning down at the 
bottom of his heart, and this was the only thing he 
cared to utter. How to utter it was he long in finding, 
and whether, when uttered, it would be listened to, was 
all uncertain. At last, after years of solitary struggle, 
hag-ridden, as he says, by dyspepsia, which made his 
waking thoughts one long nightmare, " without hope," 
as he tells, or at best with a desperate " hope, shrouded 
in continual gloom and grimness," he did get himself 
uttered, and his Sartor Resartus, his Miscellaneous Es- 
says, and his French Revolution are the outcome. Thus, 
by slow degrees, he won the world's ear, and by 1840 
or thereabouts, it began to be recognized that in Carlyle 
a new light had arisen in England's literature. 

No doubt the narrow though bracing atmosphere of 
his youth, the grinding poverty, the depressing ill-health, 
the fierce struggle, the want of all appreciation, which 



860 PROSE POETS. 

beset his early years, working on his naturally proud 
and violent temper, made him the rugged, stern, ungen- 
ial man he seemed to be. But had he missed this stern 
discipline, and been reared in soft and pleasant places, 
how different would he, how different would his teach- 

ng, have been ! Would it have burnt itself into the 
world's heart, as his best words have done ? 

However this may be, the strong, isolated, self-reliant 
man, when he settled at Chelsea, and began to meet 
face to face London celebrities, literary, social, and po- 
litical, — it is strange to see with what a haughty self- 
assertion he eyed and measured them. Full of genius 
as he was, strong in imagination, keen in sympathy for 
great historic characters, yet on the men he met in so- 
ciety he looked with a proud peasant's narrowness and 
bigotry of contempt. Whatever was strange to him, or 
uncongenial, he would seem to have regarded with an 
unsympathizing eye, and judged by narrow standards. 
Something of the same kind of too conscious self-asser- 
tion there was in him which we see in Burns. Deter- 
mined not to cringe to men socially their superiors, 
whom they thought to be intellectually their inferiors, 
neither of them escaped some rudeness in their manners, 
some harshness in their judgments. Unlike as they 
were in temperament — Burns the jovial Epicurean, 
Carlyle the abstinent Stoic — in this they were alike, 
that neither moved at ease through the new social cir- 
cumstances to which their genius introduced them. But 
who can wonder if both failed to solve quite success- 
fully that hardest of social problems, — when a man 
rises in society by force of his ability, to bear himself 
with becoming self-respect and dignity, and at the same 
time to show due consideration for others, — at once to 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 361 

be true to his own past, and in no way turn his back 
upon it, and at the same time genially and gracefully to 
adapt himself to new situations ? 

Whether it was owing to continual ill-health, or to 
the dire struggle he had to wage with poverty and un- 
toward circumstances, it cannot be said that Carlyle 
looked genially on the world of his fellow men. Dowered 
with a deep capacity for love, nor less with strong power 
of scorn — the love he reserved for a few chosen ones 
of his own family and his immediate circle ; the scorn 
he dealt out lavishly and promiscuously on the outer 
world, whether of chance acquaintances or of celebrities 
of the hour. Yet from behind all this scorn — or seem- 
ing scorn — there would break out strange gleams of 
reverence and tenderness, where you would least look 
for them ; and the reverence and the tenderness, we fain 
believe, lay deeper than the scorn. 

What then were some of those truths which Carlyle 
laid to heart, and preached with that emphatic power, 
which formed his poetic inspiration ? He was a prophet 
of the soul in man. Deeply sensible, as he himself ex- 
pressed it, that " the clay that is about man is always 
sufficiently ready to assert itself: that the danger is 
always the other way, that the spiritual part of man will 
become overlaid with his bodily part," he asserted with 
all the strength that was in him, and in every variety of 
form, the reality of man's spiritual nature in opposition 
to all the materialisms that threatened to crush it* 
More alive than most men to the mysteriousness of our 
present being, often weighed down under a sad sense of 
the surrounding darkness, having done long battle with 
all the doubts that issue out of it, he yet planted his 
foot firmly on deep ineradicable convictions as to the 



362 PROSE POETS. 

soul's divine origin and destiny, which he found at the 
7*oots of his being. These primal instincts were to him 
"the fountain light of all his seeing;" and on these, 
not on any nostrums of so-called analytical philosophies, 
taking his stand, he set his face towards this world and 
the next. Against the mud-philosophies, which, with 
their protoplasms, their natural selections, their hered- 
ities, would have robbed him of these cherished con- 
victions, all his works are one long indignant protest — 
a protest conducted not by argument mainly, but by 
vehement assertion of what he found in his own per- 
sonal consciousness — assertion illuminated with high 
lights of imagination, grotesque with droll humor, and 
grim with scornful raillery. 

In this he was akin to all the prophets, one of their 
brotherhood, — that he maintained the spiritual and dy- 
namic forces in man as against the mechanical. While 
so many, listening to the host of materializing teachers, 
are always succumbing to the visible, and selling their 
birthright for the mess of pottage which this world offers, 
Carlyle's voice appealed from these to a higher tribunal, 
and found a response in those deeper recesses which lie 
beyond the reach of argument and analysis. This he 
did with all his powers, and by doing so rendered a 
great service to his generation, whether they have lis- 
tened to him or not. 

This sense, that the spirit in man is the suoscance, 
the I the reality, and that the bodily senses are the 
tools we use for a little time, then lay aside ; that we 
are " spirits in a prison, able only to make signals to 
each other, but with a world of things to think and say 
which our signals cannot describe at all," has been ex- 
pressed many times by Carlyle, but never more power 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 363 

fully than in words which Mr. Justice Stephen has 
called "perhaps the most memorable utterance of our 
greatest poet." 

"It is mysterious, it is awful to consider, that we not only 
carry each a future ghost within hiin, but are in very deed 
ghosts. These limbs, whence had we them? this stormy 
force, this life-blood with its burning passion? They are 
dust and shadow; a shadow-system gathered round our Me, 
wherein through some moments or years the Divine Essence 
is to be revealed in the flesh. That warrior on his strong 
war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes, force dwells in his 
arms and heart; but warrior and war-horse are a vision, a 
revealed force, nothing more. Stately they tread the earth, 
as if it were a firm substance. Fools! the earth is but a 
film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink be- 
yond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself 
will not follow them. A little while ago they were not; a 
little while and they are not, their very ashes are not. 

" So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the 
end. Generation after generation takes to itself the form of 
a body; and forth issuing from Cimmerian night on heaven's 
mission appears. What force and fire is in each, he ex- 
pends. One grinding in the mill of industry, one hunter- 
like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of science, one madly 
dashed in pieces on the rocks of strife in war with his fel- 
lows, and then the heaven-sent is recalled, his earthly vest- 
ure falls away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished 
shadow. Thus, like some wild flaming, wild thundering 
train of Heaven's artillery, does this mysterious mankind 
thunder and flame in long-drawn quick-succeeding grandeur 
through the unknown deep. Thus, like a god- created, fire- 
breathing spirit-host, we emerge from the inane, haste 
stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunge again 
into the inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas 
filled up in our passage. Can the earth, which is dead, and 
a vision, resist spirits which have reality and are alive ? On 



364 PROSE POETS. 

the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in 
The last rear of the host will read traces of the earliest van. 
But whence? Oh, Heaven! whither? Sense knows not, 
faith knows not, only that it is through mystery to mystery, 

from God and to God. 

' We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.' " 

Closely connected with the thought thus powerfully 
expressed was his sense of the mysteriousness of Time 
as the vestibule of Eternity, and of our life here as a 
narrow isthmus between two eternities. This deep con- 
viction, instilled into him by his early Biblical training, 
and confirmed, though changed in form, by German 
transcendentalism, is ever present to his imagination. 
"Remember," he says to the young man entering on 
life, " Remember now and always that life is no idle 
dream, but a solemn reality, based upon Eternity and 
encompassed by Eternity." Again, he speaks of the 
priceless " gift of life, which a man can have but once, 
for he waited a whole eternity to be born, and now has 
a whole eternity waiting to see what he will do when 
born." 

This is a very old truth — a primeval truth, one may 
say. But into Carlyle it had sunk so profoundly, and 
he has uttered it so impressively, that it comes from his 
lips as if heard for the first time. It is the undertone 
of many of his truest and most poetic utterances, this 
thought of Time, with its birth and its decay, its tu- 
mult and unceasing change, hiding the Eternity that lies 
close behind it. The wonder with which the spectacle 
filled him, as he stood on the shore of Time, and looked 
out on the Infinite beyond, he has in many ways ex- 
pressed. Here is one of his most touching and melodi- 
ous expressions of it : — 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 365 

"He has witnessed overhead the infinite Deep, with 
greater and lesser lights, bright-rolling, silent-beaming, 
hurled forth by the hand of God ; around him, and under 
his feet, the wonderfullest Earth, with her winter snow- 
storms and her summer spice-airs, and (unaccountablest of 
all) himself standing here. He stood in the lapse of Time; 
he saw Eternity behind him, and before him. The all-en- 
circling mysterious tide of Force, thousandfold (for from 
force of thought to force of gravitation what an interval ! ) 
billowed shoreless on ; bore him along, — he too was part 
of it. From its bosom rose and vanished in perpetual 
change the lordliest Real-Phantasmagory (which was Be- 
ing) ; and ever anew rose and vanished ; and ever that 
lordliest many-colored scene was full, another yet the same. 
Oak-trees fell, young acorns sprang : men too, new-sent 
from the Unknown, he met, of tiniest size, who waxed into 
stature, into strength of sinew, passionate fire and light: 
in other men the light was growing dim, the sinews all fee- 
ble ; they sank, motionless, into ashes, into invisibility ; 
returned back to the Unknown, beckoning him their mute 
farewell. He wanders still by the parting spot ; cannot 
hear them; they are far, how far! It was sight for angels 
and archangels ; for, indeed, God Himself had made it 
wholly." 

With all this deep sense of the Eternal brooding over 
him, yet if one were asked how he conceived of the nat- 
ure of this Eternal, with what powers he peopled it, the 
answer would not be easy ; for of this he has nowhere 
spoken plainly, often spoken contradictorily. He had, 
no one can doubt, a real belief in " the Everlasting 
Mind behind nature and history." But what was the 
character of this Mind, what its attitude towards ,men, 
this was a question he would probably have put aside 
with some impatience. To formulate it, either in speech 
or in thought, he would have held to be an impertinence. 



366 PROSE POETS. 

To him it was the Unnamable, the Inconceivable ; 
man's only becoming attitude towards it was not speech, 
nor conception, nor sentiment, — but silence, absolute 
silence. When he did allow himself any definite thought 
about this unnamable centre of Things, he conceived 
that it was Power, Force, that there lay the fountain of 
law and order, and that to this law and order belonged 
a kind of stern unbending justice, which had power, 
and would use it to vindicate itself and execute its in- 
exorable decrees. To these man has to bow, not to 
question or investigate them. As to attributing mercy, 
forgiveness in any sense, not to speak of love, to this 
inexorable power, this peremptory fate, that, as he 
thought, could only be done by weakness or self-decep- 
tion. 

Sir Henry Taylor is reported to have said of Carlyle 
that he was " a Puritan who had lost his creed." "But 
though the superstructure of Puritanism had disap- 
peared, the original substratum remained — the stern 
stoical Calvinism of his nature was the foundation on 
which all his views were built. Nor is this to be won- 
dered at. The religion in which he had been reared was 
of a rigid, un elastic kind. Like cast-iron it would break 
under pressure, but would not bend. Either the whole 
of the Westminster Confession or none of it; of that 
larger, more expansive Christianity, which can assimi- 
late and absorb the best elements of modern culture, he 
knew nothing, and would have rejected it as a delusion. 
His religious faith, if we may venture to trace it, would 
seem to be the result of three things, his own strong 
stern nature, his early Calvinistic training, and these 
two transformed by the after influx of German tran- 
scendentalism tempered by Goethism. 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 367 

That such an idealist should have become a historian 
and achieved so much on the field of history may seem 
surprising. Yet this idealism, which might have gone 
to dreaminess, was counterbalanced and held in check by 
inherent tendencies that went in the opposite direction, 
and kept him close to actual reality. He had strong 
love of concrete facts, keen insight into the picturesque 
and expressive traits of human character, indefatigable 
industry in getting at the facts that interested him, and 
a wonderful eye to read their inner meaning. His 
glowing imagination not only bodied forth the past, 
but made its characters live before us down to the 
minutest detail, — their looks, the peculiarity of their 
gait, their very dress. He throws himself into the part 
of his heroes, and represents it, as an actor would. No 
historian before him, it has been well said, was ever such 
a dramatist. As you read him, you see his hero not 
only in action, and outward appearance, but you hear 
him utter, in side hints, in soliloquy, or otherwise, the 
inner secrets of his heart. This made him a quite un~ 
rivalled interpreter of characters and epochs for which 
he had sympathy, lighting up with wonderful power 
some of the foremost men and some of the most thrill- 
ing crises in the world's history. He did this because 
of his intense sympathy with those men and those 
crises. But where his sympathy failed, his insight also 
failed. A glowing poet, a vivid painter, as few have 
ever been, or can be, he was ; but a historian, impartial, 
calm-judging, judicial-minded, this it was not in him 
to be. To a large portion of what makes up history . 
the growth of institutions, the checks and counterchecks 
of constitutional government (indeed constitutionalism 
was always a bugbear to him), the necessit}' of com- 



368 PROSE POETS. 

promise, the power of traditional usage, the value of 
habit and routine, — to all these things he was utterly 
blind; or if for a moment made aware of their exist- 
ence, he dismissed them scornfully as red-tapeism, effete 
formulas. But great men and great crises, when per- 
sonal emotion and popular passions are at the white 
heat, when iron will struggles with popular fury and 
overmasters it, — these were the subjects that exactly 
suited his peculiar temperament and turn of imagina- 
tion. This it was which made the French Revolution 
so fascinating a theme for him. All history, ancient 
or modern, did not furnish such another for one who 
had power to grapple with it : in De Quincey's words, 
" Not Nineveh nor Babylon with the enemy in all their 
gates, not Memphis nor Jerusalem in their latest ago- 
nies." 

Carlyle's book on the French Revolution has been 
called the great modern epic, and so it is — an epic as 
true and germane to this age, as Homer's was to his. 
Chaos come again, and overwhelming all extant order, 
■ — the wild volcano of mad democracy bursting and 
consuming the accumulated rubbish and corruption of 
centuries, — all the paradoxes of human nature face to 
face, blind popular passion and starving multitudes con- 
fronting court imbecility, conventionality, nostrums of 
political doctrinaires and effete diplomacy, — panic and 
trembling uncertainty controlled by clear-seeing deter- 
mined will, and all these by great inscrutable forces to- 
gether driven on to their doom. In the midst of all 
the tumults and confusion, some Mirabeau ajjpearing as 
the cloud-compeller — the one man who, had he lived, 
might have guided the tremendous forces to some cer 
tain end. " Honor to the strong man in these ages whc 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 369 

has shaken himself loose of shams, and is something. 
There lay verily in him sincerity, a great free earnest- 
ness ; nay, call it Honesty." This is a word we have 
heard almost to weariness. This, though said of Mira- 
beau, is the refrain in all his works — the admiration of 
clear-seeing penetrating intelligence, backed by adaman- 
tine will. So these be present, we shall not much in- 
quire what may be their moral purpose, or whether they 
have a moral purpose at all. The strong intellect and 
the strong will are an emanation from the central force 
of the universe, and as such have a right to rule. 

The two elements we have noted in Carlyle's way of 
thinking, the fundamental idealism, and the strong grasp 
of realism, his firm hold on actual facts, combined with 
his deep sense of the mysteriousness of life, — these 
two tendencies, seemingly contradictory, yet each en- 
hancing the other, are everywhere visible in his treat- 
ment of history. In all affairs of men, no one was so 
aware of the little known, the vast unknown. You see 
it equally in his portraits of men, and in his accounts of 
great movements. A recent writer in the Spectator has 
well pointed out how much of Carlyle's power is due 
to the way he has apprehended and brought out these 
two elements. These conflicting tendencies, so power- 
fully operating in all great tumults, Carlyle takes full 
account of, interweaves the one with the other, and by 
doing so wonderfully heightens not only the truthful- 
ness, but also the effectiveness of his pictures. In this 
how unlike Macaulay, and other historians of his kind ! 
with whom the most complex characters are explained 
down to the ground, the greatest and most confused 
movements and revolutions accounted for by definite 
causes, tabulated one, two, three. With such writers, 
U 



370 PROSE POETS. 

when they have said their say, there remains no more 
behind — they think they can lay their finger on the 
most secret springs of Providence. Their very definite- 
ness and too great knowingness is their condemnation. 

Here is the description of Marie Antoinette, taken 
from one of Carlyle's Essays, which seems a sort of 
prelude to his French Revolution : — 

"Beautiful Highborn, that wert so foully hurled low! 
For, if thy Being came to thee out of old Hapsburg Dynas- 
ties, came it not also (like my own) out of Heaven? . . . 
Oh, is there a man's heart that thinks, without pity, of those 
long months and years of slow-wasting ignominy; — of thy 
Birth, soft cradled in imperial Schonbrunn, the winds of 
heaven not to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on 
softness, thy eye on splendor; and then of thy Death, or 
hundred deaths, to which the guillotine and Fouquier-Tin- 
ville's judgment-bar was but the merciful end ? Look there, 
O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair face is 
wasted, the hair is gray with care; the brightness of those 
eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping; the face is stony, 
pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds (which her 
own hand has mended) attire the Queen of the World. The 
death hurdle, where thou sittest, pale, motionless, which only 
curses environ, must stop : a people, drunk with vengeance, 
will drink it again in full draught: far as eye reaches, a 
multitudinous sea of maniac heads; the air deaf with their 
triumph-yell! The Living-dead must shudder with yet one 
other pang : her startled blood yet again suffuses with the 
hue of agony that pale face, which she hides with her hands. 
There is, then, no heart to say, God pity thee? " 

Open his French Revolution itself almost anywhere, 
and you will find examples of the unique power I have 
spoken of. Here is one from the second volume of the 
book : — 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 371 

" As for the King, he as usual will go Avavering chame- 
leon-like ; changing color and purpose with the color of his 
environment ; — good for no kingly use. On one royal per- 
son, on the Queen only, can Mirabeau perhaps place depend 
ence. It is possible, the greatness of this man, not unskilled 
too in blandishments, courtiership, and graceful adroitness, 
might, with most legitimate sorcery, fascinate the volatile 
Queen, and fix her to him. She has courage for all noble 
daring; an eye and a heart, the soul of Theresa's daugh- 
ter. . . . ' She is the only man,' as Mirabeau observes, 
'whom his Majesty has about him.' Of one other man 
Mirabeau is still surer — of himself. . . . Din of battles, 
wars more than civil, confusion from above and from below: 
in such environment the eye of prophecy sees Comte de 
Mirabeau, like some Cardinal de Retz, stormfully maintain 
himself; with head all-devising, heart all-daring, if not vic- 
torious, yet still unvanquished, while life is left him. The 
specialities and issues of it, no eye of prophecy can guess 
at : it is clouds, we repeat, and tempestuous night ; and in 
the middle of it, now visible, far-darting, now laboring in 
eclipse, is Mirabeau indomitably struggling to be cloud-com- 
peller ! One can say that, had Mirabeau lived, the history 
of France and of the world had been different. . . . Had 
Mirabeau lived another year! . . . But Mirabeau could 
not live another year, any more than he could live another 
thousand years. . . . 

" The fierce wear and tear of such an existence has wast- 
ed out the giant oaken strength of Mirabeau. A fret and 
fever that keeps heart and brain on fire. . . . On Saturday, 
the second day of April, Mirabeau feels that the last of the 
days has risen for him; that on this day he has to depart 
and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his life has been ! 
Lit up, for the last time, in the glare of coming dissolution, 
the mind of the man is all glowing and burning ; utters 
itself in sayings, such as men long remember. He longs to 
live, yet acquiesces in death, argues not with the inexorable. 
His speech is wild and wondrous ; unearthly phantasms 



372 PROSE POETS. 

dancing now their torch-dance round his soul; the soul look- 
ing out, fire-radiant, motionless, girt together for that great 
hour! At times comes a beam of light from him on the 
world he is quitting. ' I carry in my heart the death-dirge 
of the French monarchy; the dead remains of it will now be 
the spoil of the factions.' . . . While some friend is sup- 
porting him: 'Yes, support that head; would I could be- 
queath it thee ! ' For the man dies as he has lived; self- 
conscious, conscious of a world looking on. He gazes forth 
on the young Spring, which for him will never be Summer. 
The sun has risen ; he says, ' Si ce n'est pas le Dieu, c'est 
du moins son cousin germain.' ... So dies a gigantic 
Heathen and Titan, stumbling blindly, undismayed, down 
to his rest. At half-past eight in the morning, Doctor 
Petit, standing at the foot of the bed, says, ' II ne souffre 
plus.' His suffering and his working are now ended." 

Of all Carlyle's works, his French Revolution is, no 
doubt, the greatest, that by which he will probably be 
longest remembered. It is a thoroughly artistic book, 
artistically conceived and artistically executed. On it 
he expended his full strength, and he himself felt that 
he had done so. 

His Cromwell and his Frederick, with all their power, 
are comparatively amorphous productions, as he would 
have called them. There is in them far less of the 
shaping power that he put forth on the French Revolu- 
tion. For Carlyle, rugged and gnarled though he was, 
none the less was a great artist, not of the mellifluous, 
but of the strong and vehement order, delighting in the 
Titanic, yet intermingling it, ever and anon, with soft 
bursts of pathos ; as you see some rough granite mount- 
ain, with here and there well-springs of clearest water, 
and streaks of greenest verdure. Had time served I 
could have cited from the two latter histories passages 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 373 

in which his pictorial and poetic power shine forth con- 
spicuously. Such is the description of the battle of 
Dunbar, in Cromwell. In this passage his graphic 
power of rendering a landscape is seen, the same power 
that appears in another way in the description he gives 
of the Border hills and dales in the Reminiscences of 
Edward Irving. 

I have said that Carlyle was essentially a great artist, 
both in the way in which he conceived things, and in 
the way in which he expressed his conception of them. 
An artist, not of the Raphael or Leonardo order, but of 
the Rembrandt, or even of the Michael Angelo type, 
— forceful, rugged, gnarled, lurid, Titanic. 

Being an artist, he wrought out for himself a style 
of his own, highly artificial, no doubt intensely self- 
conscious, but yet one which reflected with wonderful 
power and exactness his whole mental attitude, — the 
way in which he habitually looked out from his dark 
soul on men and things. He was weary of glib words, 
and fluent periods, which impose on reader and writer 
alike, which film over the chasms of their ignorance, 
and make them think they know what they do not 
know. As to style, he himself gives this rule in his 
Reminiscences : " Learn, so far as possible, to be intelli- 
gible and transparent — no notice taken of your style, 
but solely of what you express by it : this is your clear 
rule, and if you have anything which is not quite trivial 
to express to your contemporaries, you will find such 
rule a great deal more difficult to follow than many 
people think." 

Excellent precept ; but, alas for performance ! none 
ever broke the rule more habitually than Carlyle him- 
*elf. The idiom which he ultimately forged for himself 



374 PROSE POETS. 

was a new and strange form of English — rugged, dis- 
jointed, often uncouth ; in his own phrase, "vast, fitful, 
decidedly fuliginous," but yet bringing out with marvel- 
lous vividness the thoughts that possessed him, the few 
truths which he saw clearly, and was sure of — while it 
suggested not less powerfully the dark background of 
ignorance against which those truths shone out. In all 
this he was a great and original artist, using words, his 
tools, to bring out forcibly the effects most present 
to his own mind, and to convey them to the minds of 
others. To achieve this, he cared not how much he 
violated all the decorums, and shocked the proprieties 
of literature. He set at naught what are usually 
called the models of English composition — he laid un- 
der contribution the most diverse and outlandish sources 
of speech, borrowing now something from his native 
Annandale idiom and vocabulary, largely from German 
sources (Jean Paul Eichter is especially named), im- 
porting not only words and phrases, but whole turns of 
language, hitherto unheard in English, while, to express 
the droll humors and grim fancies that possessed him, 
he dashed in grotesque side-lights, copious nicknames, 
that seem to have been native to him, or a trick inher- 
ited from his shrewd, caustic old father. 

Read page after page, such a style soon wearies. 
One gets to feel as if driven over a rough stony road, 
in a cart without springs. But in short descriptions 
and pictures, it is stimulative and impressive, as few 
other styles are. What effect, if any, it has had on our 
language, may be a question. One thing only is certain. 
Carlyle must be left alone with his own style. When 
taken up by imitators, it becomes simply unendurable. 

I shall close with a few words from the lament he 



THOMAS CARLYLE. 375 

breathed over Edward Irving, written as long ago as 
1835. They give a glimpse of the nobleness that was 
in Carlyle's heart beneath all his moroseness, as well of 
the height of poetry to which, on fitting occasions, he 
could rise. 

"Edward Irving' s warfare has closed; if not in victory, 
yet in invincibility, and faithful endurance to the end. . . . 
The voice of our ' son of thunder,' with its deep tone of 
wisdom, has gone silent so soon. . . . The large heart, with 
its large bounty, where wretchedness found solacement, and 
they that were wandering in darkness, the light as of a 
home, has paused. The strong man can no more : beaten 
on from without, undermined from within, he must sink 
overwearied, as at nightfall, when it was yet but the mid- 
season of the day. Scotland sent him forth a Herculean 
man ; our mad Babylon wore him and wasted him, with all 
her engines ; and it took her twelve years. He sleeps with 
his fathers, in that loved birth-land : Babylon, with its 
deafening inanity, rages on ; to him henceforth innocuous, 
unheeded — forever. 

" One who knew him well, and may with good cause love 
him, has said : ' But for Irving, I had never known what 
the communion of man with man means. His was the 
freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in 
contact with: I call him, on the whole, the best man I have 
ever (after trial enough) found in this world, or now hope 
to find.' 

" The first time I saw Irving was six and twenty years ago, 
in his native town, Annan. He was fresh from Edinburgh, 
with college prizes, high character, and promise. . . . We 
heard of famed professors of high matters classical, mathe- 
matical, a whole Wonderland of knowledge : nothing but 
joy, health, hopefulness without end, looked out from the 
blooming young man. 

" The last time I saw him was three months ago, in Lon- 
don. Friendliness still beamed from his eyes, but now from 



376 PROSE POETS. 

amid unquiet fire ; his face was flaccid, wasted, unsound ; 
hoary as with extreme age : he was trembling on the brink 
of the grave. Adieu, thou first Friend ; adieu, while this 
confused twilight of existence lasts ! Might we meet where 
Twilight has become Day ! ' ' 



CHAPTER XV. 

PROSE POETS : CARDINAL NEWMAN. 

During the first fifty years of this century, there 
were living in England three men, three teachers of 
men, each of whom appealed to what is highest in man, 
to the moral and spiritual side of human nature, and 
by that appeal told most powerfully on his generation. 
These men were William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, 
and John Henry Newman. Each gathered round him- 
self hi time, whether consciously or not, a group of dis- 
ciples, whom he influenced, and who became conductors 
of his influence to the minds of his countrymen. All 
three were idealists, believers in the mental and spir- 
itual forces, as higher than the material, and as ruling 
them — but idealists each after his own fashion. TIiq 
strength of each lay in a large measure in his imagina- 
tion, and in the power with which he stirred his fellow- 
men, by bearing home to their imaginations his own 
views of truth. But here any likeness between them 
begins and ends. 

No three men of power, living in the same epoch, 
lived more aloof from each other, borrowed less from 
each other, were more independent of each other's in- 
fluence, were less appreciative of each other's gift. 

What Carlyle thought of Wordsworth we know too 
well, from the brief notice in the Reminiscences, in which 
Carlyle speaks out his " intelligent contempt" for the 
great poet — a contempt which does not prove his own 



378 PROSE POETS. 

superiority. And Wordsworth, if he did not return the 
contempt, was, we have reason to believe, in no way an 
admirer of Carlyle, or of any of his works ; and, when 
they met, turned but a cold side towards him. 

There is no reason to think that Carlyle and Cardinal 
Newman knew much or anything of each other's works ; 
certainly they never met. For High Church doctrine 
Carlyle expresses nothing but scorn, whenever he al- 
ludes to it, and cannot preserve either equanimity or 
good manners in presence of anything that looked like 
sacerdotalism. 

Had they ever met, we can well imagine the refined 
Cardinal Newman turning toward the rough Scot that 
reticence and reserve which none knew better how to 
maintain, in presence of the uncongenial. Then, as to 
Wordsworth and Cardinal Newman, while the old poet 
knew and appreciated The Christian Year, and used to 
comment on it, there is nowhere any evidence that Car- 
dinal Newman's works had ever reached, or any way 
affected him. And as for the younger of these two, it 
was only this time last year that he told one in Oxford, 
that he was quite innocent of any familiarity with 
Wordsworth. " No ! I was never soaked in Words- 
worth, as some of my contemporaries were." 

Strange, is it not ? that three such teachers, who have 
each at different times influenced so powerfully- men 
younger than themselves, should have lived so apart, as 
little appreciating each other, as if they had been in- 
habitants of different countries, or even of different 
planets. 

Of these three teachers, the two elder are no longer 
here. The third still remains among us, in beautiful 
and revered old age. It is of him that I have now to 
speak. 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 379 

We saw how that which lay at the centre of Carlyle's 
great literary power was the force of a vigorous per- 
sonality, a unique character, an indomitable will. Not 
less marked and strong is the personality of Cardinal 
Newman, but the two personalities passed through very 
different experiences. In the one the rough ore was 
presented to the world, just as it had come direct from 
mother earth, with all the clay and mud about it. The 
other underwent in youth the most searching processes, 
intellectual and social ; met, in rivalry or in friendship, 
many men of the highest order, his own equals, and 
came forth from the ordeal seven times refined. But 
this training no way impaired his native strength or 
damped his ardor. Only it taught him to know what 
is due to the feelings and convictions of others, as well 
as what became his own self-respect. He did not con- 
sider it any part of veracity to speak out, at all hazards, 
every impulse and prejudice, every like and dislike 
which he felt. That a thing is true was, in his view, 
" no reason why it should be said, but why it should be 
done, acted on, made our own inwardly." And as the 
firm fibre of his nature remained the same, all the train- 
ing and refining it went through made it only more sure 
in aim, and more effective in operation. The difference 
of the two men is that between the furious strength of 
Roderick Dhu, and the trained power and graceful skill 
of James Fitz-James. 

There are many sides from which the literary work 
of Cardinal Newman might be viewed ; but there is 
only one aspect in which, speaking in this place, it 
would be pertinent to regard it. To dwell on his work 
as a theologian, or as a controversialist, or even as he is 
% preacher or a religious teacher, would be unbecoming 



380 PROSE POETS. 

here. It is mainly as he is a poet that I feel warranted 
to advert to his writings now. 

When I speak of him as one of the great prose poets 
of our time, this is not because, as in the case of Carlyle, 
he had not the gift of expressing himself in verse, or 
did not at times practise it. That he could do so ef- 
fectively, readers of the Lyra Apostolica do not need to 
be informed. They remember his few impressive lines 
on The Call of David, rendering in a brief page of verse 
the whole outline of that wonderful life ; his lines too 
- on David and Jonathan, and those on The Greek Fa- 
thers, and those entitled Separation, upon a friend lately 
f lost. 

Here are some lines entitled Rest of Saints Departed: 

" They are at rest: 
We may not stir the heaven of their repose 
By rude invoking voice, or prayer addrest 

In waywardness, to those 
Who in the mountain grots of Eden lie, 
And hear the fourfold river as it murmurs by. 

" They hear it sweep 
In distance down the dark and savage vale; 
But they at rocky bed, or current deep, 

Shall never more grow pale ; 
They hear, and meekly muse, as fain to know, 
How long untired, unspent, that giant stream shall flow." 

Or the next poem of the book, called Knowledge, which 
means the knowledge which saints departed have of 
what goes on on earth : — 

" A sea before 
The Throne is spread; its pure, still glass 
Pictures all earth- scenes as they pass. 

We, on its shore, 
Share, in the bosom of our rest, 
God's knowledge, and are blest." 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 381 

Just one more, the condensed severity of the lines en- 
titled Deeds not Words. 

" Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control, 
That o 'er thee swell and throng ; 
They will condense within thy soul, 
And change to purpose strong. 

" But he, who lets his feelings run 
In soft luxurious flow, 
Shrinks when hard service must be done, 
And faints at every woe. 

"Faith's meanest deed more favor bears, 
Where hearts and wills are weighed, 
Than brightest transports, choicest prayers, 
Which bloom their hour and fade." 

Such short poems as these showed, long before The 
Dream of Gerontius appeared, that Cardinal Newman 
possessed the true poet's gift, and could speak the poet's 
language, had he cared to cultivate it. But he was 
called to another duty, and passed on. To an age which 
was set, as this age is, on material prosperity, easy liv- 
ing, and all that gratifies the flesh, he felt called to 
speak a language long unheard ; to insist on the reality 
of the things of faith, and the necessity of obedience ; 
to urge on men the necessity to crush self, and obey ; 
to press home a severer, more girt-up way of living ; to 
throw himself into strenuous conflict with the darling 
prejudices of his countrymen. It was in his Parochial 
Sermons, beyond all his other works, that he spoke out 
the truths which were within him — spoke them with all 
the fervor of a prophet and the severe beauty of a 
poet. Modern English literature has nowhere any lan- 
guage to compare with the style of these Sermons, so 
simple and transparent, yet so subtle withal ; so strong 
yet so tender; the grasp of a strong man's hand, com- 



382 PROSE POETS. 

bined with the trembling tenderness of a woman's heart, 
expressing in a few monosyllables truth which would 
have cost other men a page of philosophic verbiage, lay- 
ing the most gentle yet penetrating finger on tbe very 
core of things, reading to men their own most secret 
thoughts better than they knew them themselves. 

Carlyle's style is like the full untutored swing of the 
giant's arm ; Cardinal Newman's is the assured self-pos- 
session, the quiet gracefulness, of the finished athlete. 
The one, when he means to be effective, seizes the most 
vehement feelings and the strongest words within his 
reach, and hurls them impetuously at the object. The 
other, with disciplined moderation, and delicate self- 
restraint, shrinks instinctively from overstatement, but 
penetrates more directly to the core by words of sober 
truth and ; ' vivid exactness." 

One often hears a lament that the mellow cadence 
and perfect rhythm of the Collects and the Liturgy 
are a lost art — a grace that is gone from the English 
language. It is not so. There are hundreds of pas- 
sages iu Cardinal Newman's writings which, for grace- 
ful rhythm and perfect melody, may be placed side by 
side with the most soothing harmonies of the Prayer 
Book. 

In his mode of thought the first characteristic I would 
notice is his innate and intense idealism. Somewhere 
in his Apologia he says that there had been times in his 
life when the whole material world seemed to him un- 
real, unsubstantial as a dream. And all through life it 
would seem that the sense of his own soul, of his spir- 
itual nature, and of the existence of God, was more 
present to him than the material world which sur« 
rounded him. . 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 383 

It is a thought of his, always deeply felt, and many 
times repeated, that this visible world is but the outward 
shell of an invisible kingdom, a screen which hides from 
our view things far greater and more wonderful than 
any which we see, and that the unseen world is close to 
us, and ever ready as it were to break through the shell, 
and manifest itself. 

" To those who live by faith," he says, "everything they 
see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, 
the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of 
the earth, are as types and figures, witnessing and teaching 
the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined 
one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be 
transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out 
of sight, but in due time, as snow melts and discovers what 
it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those 
greater splendors which are behind it, and on which at pres- 
ent it depends. In that day shadows will retire, and the 
substance show itself. The sun will grow pale and be lost 
in the sky, but it will be before the radiance of Him, whom 
it does but image, the Sun of Righteousness. . . . Our own 
mortal bodies will then be found in like manner to contain 
within them an inner man, which will then receive its due 
proportions, as the soul's harmonious organ, instead of the 
gross mass of flesh and blood which sight and touch are sen- 
sible of." 

In this, and in many another place, he expresses the 
feeling that here he is walking about " in a world of 
shadows," and that there is behind it " that kingdom 
where all his real." To his eye the very movements of 
nature, and the appearances of the sky, suggest the 
presence of spiritual beings in them. In his Sermon, 
on the Feast of St. Michael and all Angels, this thought 
occurs : — 



384 PROSE POETS 

" Whenever we lo^k abroad, we are reminded of those 
most gracious and holy Beings, the servants of the Holiest, 
who deign to minister to the heirs of salvation. Every 
breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful 
prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the 
waving of the robes of those, whose faces see God in 
heaven." 

In the same strain he says : — 

" Bright as is the sun, and the sky, and the clouds ; green 
as are the leaves and the fields; sweet as is the singing of 
the birds; we know that they are not all, and we will not 
take up with a part for the whole. They proceed from a 
centre of love and goodness, which is God Himself; but 
they are not His fulness; they speak of heaven, but they 
are not heaven; they are but as stray beams and dim reflec- 
tions of His Image; they are but crumbs from the table. 
We are looking for the day of God, when all this outward 
world, fair though it be, shall perish. . . . We can bear 
the loss, for we know it will be but the removing of a veil. 
We know that to remove the world which is seen will be 
the manifestation of the world which is not seen. We 
know that what we see is as a screen hiding from us God 
and Christ, and Plis Saints and Angels. And we earnestly 
desire and pray for the dissolution of all we see, from our 
longing after that which we do not see." 

This is, no doubt, not a common state of mind, but it 
is one which is in some way shared by all great spirit- 
ual teachers. We saw how, taking the form of tran- 
scendentalism, it lay at the base of Carlyle's whole way 
of looking at things. But the passage I have just read, 
if compared with a like passage which I quoted from 
Carlyle, shows how very differently the two writers 
apprehended the same truth. To Carlyle the eternal 
world, which he felt to be so near and so all-absorbing, 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 385 

appeared in a stern, often in a lurid light. To Cardinal 
Newman it appears in its calmness and its majesty, 
invested with a light which, if pensive — even awful — 
is still calm and serene. The eternity which Carlyle 
conceived was filled only with that which his own grim 
imagination pictured, stern, over-ruling Force at the 
centre, whence proceeded adamantine law. To Cardinal 
Newman it is peopled with all the soul-subduing, yet 
soothing objects which Christianity reveals. 

Again, there is another powerful conviction which we 
noted in Carlyle, which also, though in a very different 
way, is ever present to Cardinal Newman. It is the 
sense of the mysteriousness of our present being — that 
we even now belong to two worlds ; and that the invisi- 
ble world, and that part of ourselves which we cannot 
see, are far more important than the part which we do 
see. 

" All this being so, and the vastness and mystery of the 
world being borne in upon us, we begin to think that there 
is nothing here below, but, for what we know, has a con- 
nection with everything else; the most distant events may 
yet be united, and meanest and highest may be parts of 
one; and God may be teaching us, and offering knowledge 
of His ways if we will but open our eyes, in all the ordinary 
matters of the day." 

One way in which he shows this sense of mystery 
is the feeling of wonder with which he looks upon the 
brute creation : — 

" Can anything," he asks, "be more marvellous or start- 
ling, unless we were used to it, than that we should have a 
race of beings about us whom we do but see, and as little 
know their state, or can describe their interests, or their 
destiny, as we can tell of the inhabitants of the sun and 
25 



386 PROSE POETS. 

moon? It is indeed a very overpowering thought, when we 
get to fix our minds on it, that we familiarly use, I may say 
hold intercourse with, creatures who are as much strangers 
to us, as mysterious, as if they were fabulous, unearthly 
beings, more powerful than man, and yet his slaves, which 
Eastern superstitions have invented. They have apparently 
passions, habits, and a certain accountableness, but all is 
mystery about them. We do not know whether they can 
sin or not, whether they are under punishment, whether 
they are to live after this life. ... Is it not plain to our 
senses that there is a world inferior to us in the scale of be- 
ings, with which we are connected without understanding 
what it is? And is it difficult to faith to admit the word of 
Scripture concerning our connection with a world superior 
to us?" 

And to thoughtful minds that world of brute animals 
is as mysterious still, nor is the veil of mystery removed 
by talk about evolution, and the impudent knowingness 
it often engenders. 

Again, Cardinal Newman's mind dwelt much in the 
remote past; but the objects it there held converse 
with were of a different order from those which at- 
tracted the gaze of Carlyle. Not the rise and fall of 
mighty kingdoms and dynasties ; not 

" The giant forms of empires on their way 
To ruin;" 

not heroes, and conquerors, the " massive iron hammers " 
of the whole earth ; not the great men and the famous 
in the world's affairs. With these he could deal, as his 
Lectures on the Turks prove. But the one object which 
attracted his eye in all the past was the stone hewn 
out of the side of the mountain, which should crush to 
pieces all the kingdoms of the earth. The kingdom of 
Christ " coming to us from the very time of the apos- 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 387 

ties, spreading out into all lands, triumphing over a 
thousand revolutions, exhibiting an awful unity, glorying 
in a mysterious vitality, so majestic, so imperturbable, 
so bold, so saintly, so sublime, so beautiful." This was 
the one object which filled his heart and imagination. 
This was the vision which he had ever in his eye, and 
these are the feelings with which it inspired him : — 

" What shall keep us calm and peaceful within ? What 
but the vision of all Saints of all ages, whose steps we fol- 
low. . . . The early times of purity and truth have not 
passed away ! they are present still ! We are not solitary, 
though we seem so. Few now alive may understand or 
sanction us; but those multitudes in the primitive time, who 
believed, and taught, and worshipped as we do, still live unto 
God, and in their past deeds and present voices cry from 
the Altar. They animate us by their example; they cheer 
us by their company; they are on our right hand and our 
left, Martyrs, Confessors, and the like, high and low, who 
used the same creeds, and celebrated the same mysteries, 
and preached the same gospel as we do. And to them were 
joined, as ages went on, even in fallen times, nay, even now 
in times of division, fresh and fresh witnesses from the 
Church below. In the world of spirits there is no difference 
of parties. . . . The truth is at length simply discerned by 
the spirits of the just; human additions, human institutions, 
human enactments, enter not with them into the unseen 
state. They are put off with the flesh. Greece and Rome, 
England and France, give no color to those souls which have 
been cleansed in the One Baptism, nourished by the One 
Body, and moulded upon the One Faith. Adversaries agree 
together directly they are dead, if they have lived and walked 
in the Holy Ghost. The^ harmonies combine and fill the 
temple, while discords and imperfections die away." 

This was to him no sentimental dream, cherished in 
the closet, but unfit to face the world. It was a reality 



388 PROSE POETS. 

which moulded his own character and his destiny, and 
determined the work he set himself to do on earth. He 
saw, as he believed, a religion prevalent all around, 
which was secular and mundane, soft, and self-indulgent, 
taking in that part of the gospel which pleases the flesh, 
but shrinking from its sterner discipline and higher 
aspirations. He made it the aim of his life to intro- 
duce some iron into its blood, to import into the relig- 
ion of his day something of the zeal and devotion and 
self-denying sanctity which were the notes of the early 
Faith. The vision which he beheld in the primitive ages 
he labored to bring home and make practical in these 
modern times. It will be said, I know, that Cardinal 
Newman is an Ascetic, and teaches Asceticism. And 
there are many who think that, when they have once 
labelled any view with this name, they have as good as 
disproved it. Do such persons deny that Asceticism, in 
some sense, is an essential part of Christianity, that to 
deny self, to endure hardness, is one of its most charac- 
teristic precepts ? Those who most fully acknowledge 
this precept know that it is one thing to acknowledge, 
quite another to obey it. But the world is so set on the 
genial, not to say the jovial, it so loves the padding of 
material civilization in which it enwraps itself, that it 
resents any crossing of the natural man, and will always 
listen greedily to those teachers — and they are many — 
who persuade it that the flesh ought to have its own 
way. A teacher so to its mind the world has not found 
vjn Cardinal Newman. 

It is not, however, our part. here to estimate the need 
or the value of the work he has done. But it is easy 
to see how well his rare and peculiar genius fitted him 
for doing it. * If, on the one side, he had the imagina- 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 389 

tive devotion which clung to a past ideal, he had, on the 
other side, that penetrating insight into human nature, 
which made him well understand his own age, and its 
tendencies. He was intimately acquainted with his own 
heart, and he so read the hearts of his fellow-men, that 
he seemed to know their inmost secrets. In his own 
words he could tell them what they knew about them- 
selves, and what they did not know, till they were 
startled by the truth of his revelations. His knowledge 
of human nature, underived from books and philosophy, 
was intuitive, first-hand, practical. In this region he 
belonged to the pre-scientific era. He took what he 
found within him, as the first of all knowledge, as the ~\ 
thing he was most absolutely certain of. The feelings^ \ 
desires, aspirations, needs, which he felt in his own 
heart, the intimations of conscience, sense of sin, long- 
ing for deliverance, these were his closest knowledge, to 
accept, not to explain away, or to analyze into nothing. J 
They were his original outfit, they fixed his standard of 
judgment; they furnished the key by which he was to J 
read the riddle of life, and to interpret the world ; they 
were the " something within him, which was to harmo- 
nize and adjust " all that was obscure and discordant 
without him. The nostrums by which these primal 
truths are attempted to be explained away nowadays, 
heredity, antecedent conditions, these had not come 
much into vogue in his youth. But we know well 
enough how he would have dealt with them. What I 
feel and know intimately at first hand, that I must ac- 
cept and use as the condition of all other knowledge ; 
I am not to explain this away by uncertain theories or 
doubtful analyses ; I cannot unclothe myself of myself, 
at the bidding of any philosophical theory, however 
plausible. This is what he would have said. 



390 PROSE POETS. 

The sermons are full of such heart-knowledge, such 
reading to men of their own hidden half-realized selves. 

But it is not my purpose here to go into this, but to 
exhibit those places in Dr. Newman's teaching which 
break almost involuntarily into poetry, and" become po- 
etical, not in feeling and conception only, but in expres- 
sion also. Who has so truly and beautifully touched 
those more subtle and evanescent experiences, by which 
tender and imaginative natures are visited ? 

This is the way he describes our feelings in looking 
back on much of our life that is past : — 

" When enjoyment is past, reflection comes in. Such is 
the sweetness and softness with which days long past fall 
upon the memory, and strike us. The most ordinary years, 
when we seemed to be living for nothing, these shine forth 
to us in their very regularity and orderly course. What 
was sameness at the time is now stability; what was dull- 
ness is now a soothing calm; what seemed unprofitable has 
now its treasure in itself; what was but monotony is now 
harmony; all is pleasing and comfortable, and we regard it 
all with affection. Nay, even sorrowful times (which at 
first sight is wonderful) are thus softened and illuminated 
afterwards." 

Thus too he describes the remembrance of our child- 
hood : — 

" Such are the feelings with which men look back on their 
childhood, when any accident brings it vividly before them. 
Some relic or token of that early time, some spot, or some 
book, or a word, or a scent, or a sound, brings them back in 
memory to the first years of their discipleship, and they 
then see, what they could not know at the time, that God's 
presence went up with them and gave them rest. Nay, 
even now, perhaps, they are unable to discern fully what it 
was which made them so bright and glorious. They are full 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 391 

of tender, affectionate thoughts towards those first years, 
but they do not know why. They think it is those very 
years which they yearn after, whereas it is the presence of 
God which, as they now see, was then over them, which 
attracts them. They think that they regret the past, when 
they are but longing after the future. It is not that they 
would be children again, but that they would be Angels and 
would see God; they would be immortal beings, crowned 
with amaranth, and with palms in their hands, before His 
Throne." 

There is one thing which makes a difficulty in quot- 
ing the passages in Dr. Newman's writings which are 
most touching and most truly poetical. They do not 
come in at all as " purpurei panni" — as pieces of orna- 
mental patchwork in the midst of his religious teaching, 
introduced for rhetorical effect. They are interwoven 
with his religious thought, are indeed essential parts of 
it, so that you cannot isolate without destroying them. 
And to quote here for the purpose of literary illustra- 
tion, what were meant for a more earnest purpose^ 
would seem to be out of place, if not irreverent. But 
there are touching passages of another kind, which are 
characteristic of Dr. Newman's writings and give them 
a peculiar charm. They are those which yield moment- 
ary glimpses of a very tender heart that has a burden 
of its own, unrevealed to man. Nothing could be more 
alien to Dr. Newman's whole nature than to withdraw 
the veil, and indulge in those public exhibitions of him- 
self which are nowadays so common and so offensive. 
It is but a mere indirect hint he gives — a few indirect 
words, dropped as it were unawares, which many might 
read without notice, but which, rightly understood, seem 
breathed from some very inward experience. It is. as I 



392 PROSE POETS. 

have heard it described, as though he suddenly opened 
a book, and gave you a glimpse for a moment of won- 
derful secrets, and then as quickly closed it. But the 
glance you have had, the words you have caught, haunt 
you ever after with an interest in him who uttered them, 
which is indescribable. The words, though in prose, 
become, what all high poetry is said to be, at once a 
revelation and a veil. 

Such a glimpse into hidden things seems given in a 
passage in the sermon on " a Particular Providence." 

"How gracious is the revelation of God's particular prov- 
idence ... to those who have discovered that this world 
is but vanity, and who are solitary and isolated in them- 
selves, whatever shadows of power and happiness surround 
ihem. The multitude, indeed, go on without these thoughts, 
either from insensibility, as not understanding their own 
wants, or changing from one idol to another, as each suc- 
cessively fails. But men of keener hearts would be over- 
powered by despondency, and would even loathe existence, 
did they suppose themselves under the mere operation of 
fixed laws, powerless to excite the pity or the attention of 
Him who has appointed them. What should they do espe- 
cially, who are cast among persons unable to enter into their 
feelings, and thus strangers to them, though by long custom 
ever so much friends! or have perplexities of mind they can- 
not explain to themselves, much less remove them, and no 
one to help them, — or have affections and aspirations pent 
up within them, because they have not met with objects to 
which to devote them, — or are misunderstood by those 
around them, and find they have no words to set themselves 
right with them, or no principles in common by way of ap- 
peal, — or seem to themselves to be without place or purpose 
in the world, or to be in the way of others, — or have to 
follow their own sense of duty without advisers or support- 
ers, nay, to resist the wishes and solicitations of superiors 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 393 

or relatives, — or have the burden of some painful secret, or 
of some incommunicable solitary grief! " 

And then follows a passage showing with wonderful 
tenderness what this particular providence really is to 
each individual soul, how close, how sympathizing, how 
consoling ! but it is almost too sacred to quote here. 

I have heard a very thoughtful man say that he knew] 
many passages of these sermons off by heart, and that 
he found himself repeating them to himself, for comfort 
and strengthening, more often than any poetry he knew. 
Just such a passage is the sequel to that which I have 
last quoted. 

I am, as I have said, unwilling to intrude here upon 
what is distinctly religious in Dr. Newman's teaching. 
But I feel it necessary to do so, in some measure, to 
show the intimacy of his heart-knowledge, the inward- 
ness, which is the special character of his thought. Un- 
less this is seen, we do not understand him. Therefore 
I venture to give these words of his : — 

" We do not know, perhaps, what or where our pain is; 
we are so used to it that we do not call it pain. Still, so it 
is; we need a relief to our hearts, that they may be dark 
and sullen no longer, or that they may not go on feeding 
upon themselves; we need to escape from ourselves to some- 
thing beyond ; and much as we may wish it otherwise, and 
may try to make idols to ourselves, nothing short of God's 
presence is our true refuge. Everything else is either a 
mockery, or but an expedient useful for its season and in 
its measure. . . . Created natures cannot open us, or elicit 
the ten thousand mental senses which belong to us, and 
through which we really live. . . . The contemplation of 
God, and nothing but it, is able fully to open and relieve 
the mind, to unlock, occupy, and fix our affections. . . . 
Life passes, riches fly away, popularity is fickle, the senses 



394 PROSE POETS. 

decay, the world changes, friends die. One alone is con- 
stant; One alone is true to us ; One alone can be true ; One 
alone can be all things to us ; One alone can supply our 
needs; One alone can train us up to our full perfection; 
One alone can give a meaning to our complex and intricate 
nature; One alone can give us tune and harmony; One 
alone can form and possess us. Are we allowed to put our- 
selves under His guidance? this surely is the only question." 

Let me quote but one passage more of a like nature 
to the foregoing one. It is from the sermon " Warfare 
the Condition of Victory." The writer has been show- 
ing that, in some way or other, trial, suffering, is the 
path to peace ; that this has been the experience com- 
mon to all Christians, and that the law remains un- 
altered. 

" The whole Church," he says, " all elect souls, each in 
its turn is called to this necessary work. Once it was the 
turn of others, and now it is our turn. Once it was the 
Apostles' turn. It was St. Paul's turn once. . . . And 
after him, the excellent of the earth, the white-robed array 
of Martyrs, and the cheerful company of Confessors, each in 
his turn, each in his day, likewise played the man. And so 
down to our time, when faith has well-nigh failed, first one 
and then another have been called out to exhibit before the 
great Kins;. It is as though all of us were allowed to stand 
around His Throne at once, and He called on first this man, 
and then that, to take up the chant by himself, each in his 
turn having to repeat the melody which his brethren have 
before gone through. Or as if we held a solemn dance to 
His honor in the courts of heaven, and each had by him- 
self to perform some one and the same solemn and graceful 
movement, at a signal given. Or as if it were some trial 
of strength, or of agility, and, while the ring of bystanders 
beheld, and applauded, we in succession, one by one, were 
actors in the pageant. Such is our state; — Angels are 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 395 

looking on, Christ has gone before, — Christ has given us 
an example, that we may follow His steps. Now it is our 
turn; and all ministering spirits keep silence and look on. 
O let not your foot slip, or your eye be false, or your ear 
dull, or your attention flagging ! Be not dispirited ; be not 
afraid ; keep a good heart; be bold ; draw not back ; — you 
will be carried through." 

Observe here one very rare gift which Cardinal New- 
man has ; he can in the midst of his most solemn and 
sacred thoughts introduce the homeliest illustrations, the 
most familiar images, and they produce no jar ; you feel 
that all is in keeping. Who but he, speaking of man's 
earthly trial, could, without offence, have described it as 
a solemn dance held in the courts of heaven, in which 
each has in his turn to perform some difficult and grace- 
ful movement at a signal given ? But here it is done 
with so delicate a touch, that you feel it to be quite ap- 
propriate. 

In the same way, when speaking of St. John as hav- 
ing outlived all his friends, and having had to " experi- 
ence the dreariness of being solitary," he says : — 

" He had to live in his own thoughts, without familiar 
friend, with those only about him who belonged to a younger 
generation. Of him were demanded by his gracious Lord, 
as pledge of his faith, all his eye loved and his heart held 
converse with. He was as a man moving his goods into a 
far country, who at intervals and by portions sends them be- 
fore him, till his present abode is well-nigh unfurnished." 

He compares St. John in his old age to a man who is 
" flitting " from his house, and has sent his furniture by 
instalments before him. Imagine how such a compar- 
ison would have fared in the hands of any ordinary 
writer — of any one, in short, not possessed of most 
consummate taste. 



396 PROSE POETS. 

I might go on for a day quoting from the Parochial 
Sermons alone passages in which the poet as well as the 
preacher speaks. I shall, however, give but one more. 
It is where he speaks of what is to be the Christian 
life's ultimate issue. 

" All God's providences, all God's dealings with us, all 
His judgments, mercies, warnings, deliverances, tend to 
peace and repose as their ultimate issue. All our troubles 
and pleasures here, all our anxieties, fears, doubts, diffi- 
culties, hopes, encouragements, afflictions, losses, attain- 
ments, tend this one way. After Christmas, Easter, and 
Whitsuntide, comes Trinity Sunday and the weeks that 
follow; and in like manner, after our soul's anxious travail; 
after the birth of the Spirit ; after trial and temptation ; 
after sorrow and pain ; after daily dyings to the world ; 
after daily risings unto holiness ; at length comes that 'rest 
which remaineth unto the people of God.' After the fever 
of life ; after wearinesses and sicknesses ; fightings and 
despondings ; languor and fretfulness ; struggling and fail- 
ing, struggling and succeeding ; after all the chancres and 
chances of this troubled and unhealthy state, at length 
comes death, at length the White Throne of God, at length 
the Beatific Vision. After restlessness comes rest, peace, 
joy ; our eternal portion, if we be worthy." 

I know not how this and other passages I have 
quoted may strike those to whom they have not been 
long familiar. To me it seems, they have a sweetness, 
a« inner melody, which few other words have. They 
fall upon the heart like dew, and soothe it, as only the 
most exquisite music can. It may be that to the few 
who can still recall the tones of the voice which first 
uttered them, remembrance lends them a charm, which 
those cannot feel who only read them. These sermons 
were the first utterance of new thoughts in a new Ian- 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 397 

guage, which have long since passed into the deeper 
heart of England. The presence and personality of the 
speaker, and the clear pathetic tones of his voice, can 
only live in the memory of those who heard him in St. 
Mary's, forty years ago. But the thoughts, and the 
style in which they are conveyed, are so perfect that 
they preserve for future generations more of the man 
who spoke them than most discourses can. It is hardly 
too much to say that they have elevated the thought and 
purified the style of every able Oxford man who has 
written since, even of those who had least sympathy 
with the sentiments they express. But they, whose 
good fortune it was to hear them when they were first 
delivered, know that nothing they have heard in the 
long interval can compare with the pensive grace, the 
thrilling pathos of the sounds, as they then fell fresh 
from the lips of the great teacher. — ~" 

I have on purpose confined myself to the Parochial\ 
Sermons, though from many other parts of Cardinal 
Newman's works I might have adduced samples of the 
poetry that lies embedded in his prose. And the reason 
is this : the sermons seem more than any of his other 
writings to be full of his individuality, and to utter his 
inner feelings in the best language. 

From his more recent discourses, preached to mixed 
congregations, one might have taken many samples, in 
which he paints with a broader brush, and lets himself 
loose in more sweeping periods, than he generally used 
in Oxford. But these, though high eloquence, do not 
seem to contain such true poetry as the earlier sermons. 
Yet there is one passage in the University Sermons, well 
known probably to many here, which I cannot close 
without referring to. He is speaking of music as an 



398 PROSE POETS. 

outward and earthly economy, under which great won- 
ders unknown are typified. 

"There are seven notes in the scale," he says ; " make 
them fourteen ; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an en- 
terprise ! What science brings so much out of so little? Out 
of what poor elements does some great Master in it create 
his new world ! Shall we say that all this exuberant invent- 
iveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some game 
or fashion of the day, without reality, without meaning? 
We may do so ; and then, perhaps, we shall account the 
science of theology to be a matter of words; yet, as there is 
a divinity in the theology of the Church, which those who 
feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful 
creation of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. 
To many men the very names which the science employs are 
utterly incomprehensible. To speak of an idea or a subject 
seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views it 
opens upon us to be childish extravagance ; yet is it pos- 
sible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of 
notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so 
various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is 
gone and perishes? Can it be that those mysterious stir- 
rings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings 
after we know not what, and awful impressions from Ave 
know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is un- 
substantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in it- 
self? It is not so, it cannot be. No ; they have escaped 
from some higher sphere ; they are the outpouring of eter- 
nal harmony in the medium of created sound ; they are 
echoes from our Home, they are the voice of angels, or the 
Magnificat of saints, or the living laws of Divine Govern- 
ance, or the Divine Attributes ; something are they besides 
themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot ut- 
ter; — though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise 
distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting 
them." 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 399 

These extracts may, perhaps, be fittingly closed with 
that passionate yet tender lament in which, in the au- 
tumn of 1843, he bade farewell to Oxford and to the 
Church of England : — 

" O mother of saints ! O school of the wise ! O nurse of 
the heroic ! of whom went forth, in whom have dwelt, 
memorable names of old, to spread the truth abroad, or to 
cherish and illustrate it at home ! O thou, from whom sur- 
rounding nations lit their lamps ! O virgin of Israel ! where- 
fore dost thou now sit on the ground and keep silence, like 
one of the foolish women, who were without oil on the com- 
ing of the Bridegroom ? . . . How is it, O once holy place, 
that 'the land mourneth, for the corn is wasted, the new 
wine is dried up, the oil languisheth, because joy is withered 
away from the sons of men ' ? . . . O my mother, whence 
is this unto thee, that thou hast good things poured upon 
thee and canst not keep them, and bearest children, yet 
darest not own them ? Why hast thou not the skill to use 
their services, nor the heart to rejoice in their love ? How is 
it that whatever is generous in purpose, and tender or deep 
in devotion, thy flower and thy promise, falls from thy 
bosom and finds no home within thine arms? Who hath 
put this note upon thee, to have ' a miscarrying womb and 
dry breasts,' to be strange to thine own flesh, and thine eye 
cruel towards thy little ones? Thine own offspring, the fruit 
of thy womb, who love thee and would fain toil for thee, thou 
dost gaze upon with fear, as though a portent, or thou dost 
loath as an offence ; — at best thou dost but endure, as if 
they had no claim but on thy patience, self-possession, and 
vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou mayest. Thou 
makest them ' stand all the day idle,' as the very condi- 
tion of thy bearing with them ; or thou biddest them to be 
gone, where they will be more welcome; or thou sellest them 
for nought to the stranger that passes by. And what wilt 
thou do in the end thereof? " 



400 PROSE POETS. 

One thing must have struck most persons, — always 
the pensiveness, often the sadness of tone which per- 
vades these extracts ; and this impression would not be 
lessened by a perusal of the sermons in full. It is so. 
The view of life taken by Dr. Newman is more than 
grave, it is a sad, sometimes almost a heart-broken one. 

Canon Liddon has somewhere asked, " How is a man 
likely to look upon his existence ? Is existence a hap- 
piness or a misery, a blessing or a curse ? " And he 
replies, " This question will, probably, be answered in 
accordance with deep-rooted tendencies of individua- 
temperament ; but these tendencies, when prolonged 
and emphasized, become systems of doctrine — as we 
call them, philosophies. And so it is that there are two 
main ways of looking at human life and its surrounding 
liabilities, which are called optimism and pessimism." 
There is a whole order of minds, and these sometimes 
the most thoughtful and deep, on whom the sad side of 
things, the dark enigmas of existence, weigh so heavily^ 
that the brighter side seems as though it were not. 
Those especially who enter on life with a high ideal, 
whether a merely aesthetic, or a moral and spiritual 
ideal, get it sorely tried by their intercourse with the 
world. All they see and meet with in actual experience 
so contradicts the high vision they once had. And with 
the increase of their experience, they are often tempted 
to despair. One thing only can save them from this 
temptation — the entrance into their hearts of the con- 
soling light that comes from above. In Carlyle this 
tendency to despair of the world was strongly present 
from the first, and being in his case unrelieved by the 
light of Christianity, his view of life darkened more and 
more as years went on. The view which Dr. Newman 



CARDINAL NEWMAN. 401 

takes of the natural condition and destiny of man, 
though modified by his gentler disposition, is hardly at 
all more hopeful. Those who remember the words in 
which he gives his impression of this world and the 
children of it, towards the close of his Apologia, will 
acknowledge this. Nothing can exceed the hopeless- 
ness of the picture he there draws. One cannot but 
hope that it is too dark and desponding a picture. But 
between the two men there is this great difference : 
however dark and despondent may be Dr. Newman's 
view of man when left to himself, he is supported and 
cheered by the faith that he has not been left to him- 
self, that there has entered into human nature a new 
and divine power, to counterwork its downward tend- 
ency, and reinvigorate its decayed energies. Amid the 
deepest despair of nature, he is still animated by this 
heavenward hope. Beneath all the discords and dis- . 
tractions of this perplexing world, he overhears a divine 
undertone, and hearing it, he can wait and be at peace. 
26 



THE END. 



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